


The Art of Scraping Through

by eugyne (AreteNike)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (except the story really starts like halfway through the burn), (unrelated to unsexy nakedness), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Guilt, Happy Ending, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Matt Holt has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Mutual Pining, Panic Attacks, Psychological Trauma, Slow Burn, Suicidal Thoughts, background Sheith - Freeform, druid!matt, its okay if you dont ship it. you dont have to. thats not what this fic is about, lotor also has ptsd but that isnt its own tag apparently, matt gets naked at one point but its pretty unsexy, matt: yea but hes MY genocidal maniac, thats it thats the fic, the altean battery thing was a trolley problem and ill die on that hill, the paladins: matt hes a genocidal maniac, the road to healing is a bumpy one, yes despite everything there is pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-08 10:18:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17979464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AreteNike/pseuds/eugyne
Summary: Matt conned his way into becoming a druid, realized he had played right into Haggar's hands, and escaped--blowing up the clone facility in the process and taking a horde of prisoners with him.Now his best chance of survival lies in falling in with the universe's other most wanted: Lotor.





	The Art of Scraping Through

**Author's Note:**

> well this got away from me. and its only two months late! :D  
> (it was supposed to be for the matt big bang lmao...)
> 
> i didnt rewatch any of the show or even look up ref pictures so any mistakes are 100% on me lmao. big thanks to nyall've for beta reading, [andy](https://semesadique.tumblr.com/) ([twitter](https://twitter.com/AndyAceCream) | [insta](https://www.instagram.com/andyacecream/)) for the FAB ART, and [dee](https://biochemattstry.tumblr.com/) for additional FAB ART when i thought andy had left... woops
> 
> [heres some music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v96wkt38EU8&t=0s&list=PLL9fVcKzbNPmjGJuxvcuGiQcxN_M_8QyR&index=2)

If asked, Matt would say he doesn't know how he got here. It's a lie; he knows exactly how he got here.

It's less guilt-inducing and possibly safer to just shrug, though.

The thing is, it started when Matt was brought to the dreaded witch herself. The soldier that escorted (read: dragged) him there was more than happy to shoo him in without going to meet her as well, which was probably lucky, because if he'd been there Matt would never have pulled this off. But he wasn't there, and so Matt was left to face her alone.

"A new specimen, I see," she'd said, probably more to herself than anything.

"Actually, I'm your new assistant," he'd responded anyway. Might as well, right?

Of course, she'd looked at him like he was insane, which was fair, because he sure felt like he was.

"I'm, uh, a big fan of your... work," he'd added, because when he bullshits he commits to the bullshit. Never mind that he was bullshitting the leader of the freakin' druids and the evil emperor's right hand alien, and oh, that "work" tends to be weird and horrific experiments on other prisoners.

This intrigued her, though, or at least faintly amused her, because she didn't murder him on the spot and instead said, "Oh, really."

"Yeah," he'd said. "I begged to be brought here to meet you. They thought I was insane, obviously." He was wearing handcuffs, after all—he needed a reason for that. "But I'm not, I meant it."

He'd then launched into glowing descriptions of some of her experiments he'd had the misfortune of witnessing firsthand. By the end of it he was distantly disgusted with himself and kind of just waiting for the other shoe to drop, but she just cackled lowly and unlocked his manacles with a wave of her hand.

"Follow me," she'd said, and that was it. He was in.

So that's the first piece of the puzzle as to _why he's here,_ and almost funny in retrospect, viewed in isolation.

Of course, that's not all there is to the story.

He spent the first few days lowkey panicking—panic for obvious reasons, lowkey because while he didn't know _much_ about the druids, he did know they could read minds. And the last thing he wanted was for his thoughts to betray him.

He convinced himself he was excited, that the energy thrumming through his veins was nerves at the new opportunity he's been offered and not a (very reasonable) intense fear of his "employer."

Whether it worked, or she was just toying with him, Matt still doesn't know. But she kept him around, only acknowledging his existence to snap at him to keep up or, occasionally, tell him to stay put. And he did, like a good dog, because that's what he was: a pet. Not an assistant. Not at first.

The change came slowly. The sentries, the Galra—that Ulaz guy in particular always looked at him funny—definitely knew something was up, but they weren't gonna question her about his presence there, and the longer they went without questioning, the more his position there became solid fact. And the more they felt he was supposed to be there, the more they _treated_ him like he was supposed to be there, casually greeting him or asking him if the witch was available. The other druids mostly ignored him, so he mostly ignored them back, and that worked out.

And then the postgalra or whatever started delivering packages and messages to _him_ and asking him to pass them on (when it wasn't of imperial importance, anyway), and she was happy enough to not have to interact with them, and they were more than happy to not interact with _her,_ and that's what really clinched it. He was no longer just _there,_ he was _convenient._

It was convenient for him too, because it kept him alive.

She even got him a set of druid robes, miniature compared to the other druids' but not dissimilar to hers. He wore them over the prison bodysuit he still lived in and (privately, hidden deep in his mind) felt that it was a metaphor for his being there: a druid on the outside, but still really a prisoner after all.

After all, it's not like he had any freedom there. He was alive, he was intact, and he watched other prisoners being tortured and killed every day and did nothing. That was the trade off, he supposed. Sacrificing morals for survival. The thought makes him sick to his stomach now, but at the time he just felt he was doing whatever he had to. That somehow it would pay off.

Like he was meant for some larger purpose than trying to find some backwater fucking hole to hide in for the rest of his life with the empire's _other_ most wanted.

But that came later; first he just slowly eroded away from the inside, and his only solace was that, at least, this would all be happening anyway, regardless of his presence. It's not like anyone else in his position would've acted differently.

The real change came the day Champion escaped. That was the one prisoner Matt was never allowed near, the one that took up most of Ulaz's time; he didn't know anything about that experiment, not gender or species or even what the experiment _was._ It's not like he was going to ask.

But there was an explosion, and sentries rushing by, and in the cell of some hapless prisoner the witch had thrust some sparking torture device into his hands and said, "Finish this." And then she'd left.

And Matt was left with an instrument of pain only druids could wield, a cowering, whimpering alien, and a choice: do the impossible just to be complicit in this suffering, or die.

If asked, he would say he agonized over that choice.

But one needn't be a druid to wield quintessence, as it turned out, and Matt had been there too long, seen too much, to sacrifice himself for a stranger. What was it all for, if he gave in now?

What is the tipping point, he'd wondered. At what point will it be too much?

And why isn't this it?

The witch had been in a terrible mood when she'd returned but at least she didn't take it out on _him._

It wasn't the last time she had him do her dirty work, and the sort of dirty work that included only kept expanding. She preferred not to teach him magic directly, so he learned by watching or getting the occasional lesson from a lesser druid—and the more he knew, the more she had him do. Torture was a favorite. He ended up with some of Ulaz's workload, too, since the guy had left when Champion did, probably complicit in his escape or something. Matt wishes he'd talked to the guy more.

Maybe he could've gone too, then.

But no, he was still there, so he focused on being good at his job and not too much on what his job _meant._ He kept his head down and full of propaganda, just in case.

He really was a druid, by then. Left to wander the ship on his own cognizance. There were places he dared not go—the escape pods, for one—because he never quite trusted she wasn't tracking him, somehow. But, ostensibly, he had free reign, and so he could go look when they captured some princess that Zarkon seemed to think was important. He didn't dare talk to her.

He also had a great view when some bigass lion-shaped robot came to rescue her—but not so great that he could be punished for staying out of it. For all his progress, he was never invited to the Komar.

That was probably good, though he wondered if he could've escaped, then, if he had.

He saw when Voltron—because that was what it was called, apparently, the big mecha thing that the lion robot was part of, Matt still wonders how it got a name that sounds so 80's Earth—came back, too. And when it killed Zarkon.

He wasn't allowed into the room she kept his body in and he rather doubted he was really dead. He wasn't put on guard duty there, either—even with the mask, the robes, his height remained unintimidating.

It was around this time that he first met Lotor. Naturally, they didn't get along.

"You're nothing more than a pet," Lotor had told him derisively, when he'd asked for Haggar once and Matt had to tell him she wasn't to be bothered.

He didn't consider himself a mere pet anymore—trained monkey, maybe. Service dog. A pet with a purpose.

"I'm her assistant," he'd said. Flat. Can't let anyone know he's scared.

"You're her toy."

That was probably true.

"How can you stand to live with yourself? As a tool for the witch's whims?" Lotor continued.

"Why do you care?" Matt responded, which admittedly wasn't the safest option but was still probably better than "At least I'm alive."

Evidently Lotor _didn't_ actually care, or he didn't want to tell Matt why, because after a pause all he said was, "I've wasted enough time on you." Then he left.

Nailed it.

Matt made an effort to avoid him after that, because those were dangerous thoughts to be having. He avoided his generals, too, whenever they popped up, although that was harder—and he didn't particularly want to _look_ like he was avoiding anyone. Better not to raise any kind of suspicion.

It was shortly before Zarkon was back on his feet that Matt heard of Project Kuron. Haggar had been acting strangely—distracted by something. Maybe she had feelings in her cold dead heart after all, or something. Either way, where she was usually so vigilant about keeping Matt occupied when she was doing something she didn't want him to know about—this time, he overheard. He overheard them talking about cloning Champion. And he chanced a glance into the room—some tiny shred of curiosity still left in him—and it was _Shiro's_ face on the holoscreen.

And Matt was, at the time, largely unaware of the goings-on in the empire—he knew Voltron existed, at least, that they were fighting Lotor now, that they'd been fighting Zarkon—but he didn't know what had happened to Shiro since... everything. But he knew now he'd been here, nearby, and one of Haggar's experiments, apparently, and Ulaz had broken him out.

For the first time in a very long time, Matt felt sick to his stomach. And this, apparently, was the tipping point—the point at which he couldn't stand to go along with this anymore. He had to do something.

(There's a part of him still that thinks it's not so unreasonable that he could tolerate everything to this point—not everyone can sacrifice themselves for a stranger, after all. There'd be a lot more heroes if they could.)

The question was, what _could_ he do about it? Project Kuron was happening elsewhere, and he didn't know where, and he wasn't supposed to know about it in the first place. He didn't know if they actually had Shiro again or if they only had... samples. He didn't know if, actually faced with a clone, he'd be able to kill it, or if that was the right thing to do—if the clones were drones or people.

That night, he'd gone to his quarters. He couldn't remember the last time he'd taken off his mask, but he did now. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen his own face, but he did now, in the tiny mirror in the bathroom he never used. His eyes glowed yellow.

He remembered that he hadn't eaten in months.

He decided to do what he always used to, back when the sorts of things he wanted to do were "build a robot" or "go to space" instead of "stop the witch from cloning my friend." He decided to learn more.

This part, at least, was easy. He'd incidentally lured everyone into complacency; no one expected him to poke around where he shouldn't, because he'd been there—it had to have been at least a year, maybe more—and never had. They thought he was on their side. Even in hindsight, he doesn't think any of them doubted him yet.

So he learned they didn't have Shiro—only his arm. He learned the clones kept dying prematurely. He learned they were growing them in quintessence tanks.

He knew concentrated quintessence was volatile, to put it mildly.

But knowing and doing are two different things, and every night he'd take off his mask and meet his yellow eyes in the mirror and wonder if he could really do this.

He hid his doubt in the daytime—insofar as there was night or day on the ship—because he knew now that druids _could_ read minds—but only if they tried, and he didn't want to give them reason to try. Externally, he remained ever the obedient worker. A good dog.

He found out when the next shipment of quintessence was headed from here to there, and made a point of not being busy when it was being prepared, leaving him free to meander on down towards the hangar where it was being checked one last time.

"I can do it," Matt offered to the druid doing the checking. "I'm not busy." He knew the other druids usually were.

The druid had paused.

"I know it's for Project Kuron," Matt offered, flat the way the druids always spoke. Confidence is key. Don't let them doubt.

And the druid didn't, not visually. It inclined his head and gestured him to it. So he stepped forward, and began to check over the shipment—leaks, quality, everything he could think of. The druid left.

Matt tampered.

Not obviously—nothing even a druid would catch unless they knew where to look, and they wouldn't, in theory, because Matt was here checking it. Nothing would seem out of place. And the moment they tried to use it...

Well, hopefully the blast would take out enough of whatever facility was on the other end that the project would stop.

He never did find out if it worked, but he knows by now that Shiro was the black paladin and Voltron doesn't seem to have him back, yet, so maybe it did.

There had been consequences—at least, _a_ consequence—because the next day Haggar had looked directly at him (never a good sign) and asked, "How do you know about Project Kuron?"

"You told me," he said, allowing a hint of confusion to seep into his voice. Of course this would be the one time someone questioned his presence. And no, it wasn't like he hadn't lied to her before, but this time the stakes were so much higher.

He expected to die, then and there, but at least this time he'd be dying for something.

But she hadn't denied it. She made a face—an expression he'd never seen her make before, so out of place it took him a moment to recognize it as confusion—and then just. Turned away. Let him be.

She'd been distracted lately, after all.

He made extra sure to be a model druid after that. He only kept an ear open for any news from the facility—if it worked, after all, it could be traced back to him, and he had to be ready.

And then Zarkon was back on his feet and Haggar was out trying to kill Voltron again and Lotor had probably been re-exiled and the druids' lair was empty but for Matt and he realized, belatedly, that this was the best chance at escape he was ever going to get.

Might as well make the most of it.

He gathered up all the prisoners she kept for her experiments—they came obediently, fearfully, they had no reason to be otherwise. He'd hurt them, after all. It was trivial to direct the sentries, to make them escort the prisoners to the escape pods, to clear their memory of everything they'd seen. He downloaded all their files and everything he could get on Champion, then wiped the rest. Too little, too late, maybe—he'd seen so many die.

He disrupted the sensors that would tell the bridge the pods had launched—that wasn't magic, just technology. It wouldn't stop them from getting a visual, of course, but everyone's attention was elsewhere—the pods got away. Matt doesn't know where those pods went, if the prisoners were okay, if Haggar somehow got them back—but they got away, that day, and Matt marched himself right down to the hangar, got in a ship, and got away too.

And that's most of the tale of how he got here—at least, the stuff he'll never tell. What he would is what happened _after_ he escaped—how he flew for what was probably weeks on end in a direction vaguely outward, practically unmoving in his seat except for fiddling with the radio now and then. The mask kept him from needing food, water, air—it picked up ambient quintessence to keep him alive. There was plenty of that in the druids' lair.

He doubted there was very much of it in empty space. He would run out, eventually, but he didn't have to worry just yet.

He learned, from the radio, that Lotor was now the empire's most wanted, by Zarkon's orders. That he was second-most wanted, by Haggar's. Par for the course, really.

It's pleasing, somehow, though, even now. Makes him feel like he did something worthwhile with his pathetic existence.

Even with the limited tech in his stolen ship, he could tap into Galran communications; he stayed pointedly away from any gathering of Galran forces. He considered trying to get to Voltron, telling them what happened to Shiro, but he had no way to track _them_ except by troop movements and he wasn't keen on running afoul of that.

It was, therefore, sheer, unmuddled luck that he ran into Lotor. Because, really, in an empire spanning a thousand galaxies, what are the chances that the two most wanted men short of the literal paladins of Voltron would meet?

Better, given they were both heading towards the fringes of Galra space; better, given that this moon's atmosphere muddles most long-range scanners; better, given Lotor was looking for him. Still phenomenally low.

"Why?" Matt had asked, when Lotor had greeted him with the admission of his search.

"You can't turn me in for a pardon," Lotor said simply. "Nor I, you. Our best chance of survival is together."

And Matt had known he was right. He hadn't liked it. But if there was anyone out here he could trust to watch his back, it was the exiled prince with a bigger target on his own back—and Lotor isn't the sort to kill without purpose. And Matt was going to run out of quintessence, eventually. He was going to have to eat, to sleep, to be vulnerable.

"Fine," Matt had said. "What's your plan?"

"Either escape the empire," Lotor said, "or join Voltron."

Escape sounded better to Matt—still does. He'd nodded.

"I have access to troop movements in here," Matt told him. "I might be able to figure out where Voltron is. Or how to get out of here without getting caught."

They'd landed on the moon to meet. After weeks of being sedentary, he could barely move for stiffness—it took him a long minute just to get out of his seat. He hobbled out of the ship and onto the moon's dusty surface, wind whipping his robes around his prison-onesie-clad legs. The mask, the quintessence protected him from the minimal atmosphere.

It was a little heartening when Lotor emerged from his ship rather the worse for wear, too. Matt's not sure how he would've felt if he'd still been that put-together asshole he'd first met. It made him trust him more, somehow—to see he was struggling, too.

He was desperate. And Matt wouldn't have thought to seek him out in turn, but he's not much less desperate.

To summarize the conversation they'd had there, on that moon—it was the kind of compromise you get when you know you're stuck with a person. When you know you can't cut and run—when you know the other person has to be satisfied, because they're going to be in your face indefinitely. Bargaining from a low, shared place.

"My ship is less conspicuous," Matt had said. "And it's got access to troop movements."

"Mine is larger and faster and made of the same material as Voltron," Lotor had said. Appealing, admittedly, though Matt can't say he knows what Voltron's made of.

"I don't need to eat, but you do."

"You will."

"I have no money."

"Nor have I."

"You want to join Voltron."

That had given Lotor pause. "I take it you do not. Are the paladins not your species?"

"Are they?" Matt had never seen the paladins themselves, only their lions—and only the princess, who was something else entirely. If they were human, it couldn't be anyone Matt knew. It couldn't be Shiro and Dad.

"You're human," Lotor had said. "They're human."

And Matt didn't want to face that—still doesn't. Doesn't want to face anyone who might know who he used to be.

He didn't know about Keith then, yet, though.

"I'd rather hide," Matt said.

"Why?" And Lotor had actually sounded curious. Lotor, who had been exiled by his own father.

"You know what it's like to be a disappointment, don't you?" Matt had said, pointed, and Lotor had looked away.

"Fine," he'd said tightly. "We'll run. But we're taking my ship."

So they took Lotor's ship. Matt's still convinced it's sentient and doesn't like him—he's lost count of the times it's electrocuted him as he tried to fix or install something. He hates that ship.

But that's another thing he didn't know yet—he just reluctantly followed Lotor aboard, and looked around, and said, "What now?"

"We go," Lotor said, and they _went,_ as far and fast as they could.

They'd... talked, too. Not much, at first, because it was weird, and Matt didn't like Lotor all that much—and it was probably mutual. But Lotor knew a lot more about what was going on in the empire than Matt did, and he knew a lot about Matt, too, and he still wanted to go to Voltron. Which meant he started telling Matt about Voltron... and Shiro.

"Champion was the black paladin, before I fought them," he told Matt. "Shiro, yes? You were captured together."

So Shiro had gone and done something good with himself after his escape. That only made Matt feel worse.

"Do you know what happened to my father, too?" was all Matt asked.

"I do not. You don't want to hear about Shiro?"

Matt's still pretty sure Lotor's no druid, and can't actually read minds, but sometimes he's a little too perceptive.

"I'm sure you'll tell me anyway," he'd said, and Lotor had made a noise that was almost a laugh—Matt can't forget that sound. Amusement had long since been lost to him.

"I will," he'd said, and sobered. "He's missing. I thought you might want to find him."

And this, of course, only kicked off Matt's favorite thing to worry about—that in killing Shiro's clones, he'd killed Shiro too. Never mind that as far as he knew, they didn't _have_ Shiro. Because Shiro's still missing, even now.

"Only if you know where to look," Matt had said finally, which was more of a way to call Lotor's bluff than to actually find Shiro, because, well. Shiro had given him a second chance, when he saved him at the Arena, and look how Matt had wasted it? How could he face Shiro now?

Lotor had paused. "Well, I'm sure Voltron has some idea."

"Then let Voltron find him."

Lotor sighed, and let it drop.

They had a lot of conversations like that, between Matt trying to upgrade the ship and getting electrocuted for his efforts, and stopping off at tiny outposts in the middle of space nowhere to stock up on supplies while in the best disguises they could wrangle. Sometimes they were recognized anyway—then they had to fight. Which is to say, Lotor had to fight, because everything Matt knew only worked when his opponent was in chains.

But Lotor never let them take him—he defended him, every time, even that time on Gosadi 6 when Matt had had them thoroughly distracted and Lotor could've slipped away on his own. He could have been free of Matt, gone to Voltron like he wanted; they were recording the Voltron Show now (which Matt flat out refused to watch) and they would have been easy to find.

But Lotor still saved him.

Which is why, when Lotor told Matt of a place nearby that was safe, hidden, that he'd created, Matt agreed to go.

The place is a colony, full of aliens like the princess: Alteans. Lotor was greeted like a god—and Matt, hanging uncomfortably behind him as he soaked in their adulation, saw Lotor _relax._ He was comfortable here, happy, or at least more so than he'd been while stuck on that ship with Matt, and whatever was left of Matt's heart sunk to his stomach.

He'd started feeling, somewhere unconscious, that Lotor maybe enjoyed his company. He hadn't realized it until just then. But Lotor was only trying to survive, same as him, and Matt was just a tool for the job—same as he'd always been.

Well, he deserves this, for thinking he could have something good after all he's done.

And then someone had told Lotor a girl had gone missing and he'd tensed right back up, and that's how Matt ended up skimming through security footage with Lotor for any indication of where she'd gone. There was a lot to look through, and Matt would kind of rather have wallowed in his misery for a while, but even if Lotor didn't _want_ Matt around, Matt owed—owes—him his help for all he's done for him. Besides, finding someone who's gone missing is a good thing and he misses doing good things—he wanted to make up some small part of the wrong he's done.

But then a familiar face caught his eye. And this, this moment, this is where everything changes; this is where he realizes he cannot possibly tell anyone how he got here, because of the people who might find out.

"Lotor," he says, pausing the hologram. Lotor comes and leans over Matt's shoulder to look. There are a couple of figures there, creeping in through a back entrance—one's obviously Galra, in empire armor, but the other...

"That's one of the paladins, I believe," Lotor says, sounding confused. "In the armor of the Blade of Marmora."

Matt doesn't know the Blade of Marmora, but he does know the boy's face. "That's Shiro's _duckling_."

"What is a duckling?"

"It's... don't worry about it. I mean he used to follow Shiro around a lot." Matt squints at the hologram and resumes the feed—there's no denying it. That's Keith. What he was doing with a Galra soldier in a place like this, Matt can't guess, but he was here and he was talking to the missing girl.

Did Keith, what, turn traitor? Decide to work for the empire? Or is he in the position Matt was in—doing what he can to survive?

But then, Lotor said he was a paladin of Voltron— _Keith,_ hot-headed troublemaker Keith, a _paladin_ —so maybe it's not that he's with the empire. Maybe it's that the soldier isn't. She could be like Ulaz was, a defector.

"What's the Blade of Marmora?" Matt asks.

"A group of rebels, I believe. I thought they were Galra only, though." Lotor's eyes narrow at the feed as the girl follows Keith and the soldier out of the colony. Matt stops looking at him.

"Well, it's not like she's in the hands of the empire, then. Keith's not the sort to defect." Unless Shiro had, but Shiro wouldn't, and, well. Shiro is missing, anyway.

"No, but if there is any chance the empire might learn of this place, then I must..." He trails off. Realizing he has no one but Matt around anymore, maybe. He straightens and tugs on Matt's shoulder; Matt turns obligingly to face him.

"I know you do not want to join Voltron," Lotor says carefully. "But this girl's departure puts everyone in this colony in danger. Will you come?"

And, somehow, Matt doesn't immediately say no.

He wants Lotor to stay, because he has nothing without him. He wants to _want_ to do something that isn't running for the rest of his pathetic life.

Mostly, he doesn't want to be selfish anymore.

Besides, Shiro isn't there—Matt won't have to face _him._ Just Keith. He can probably handle Keith.

"What are you going to do when we find her?" he asks.

It takes Lotor a second, but then he smiles, small and tired. "Talk to her—convince her to come back, if I can. Voltron can keep her safe as long as they're alive, but they've the whole empire against them. It is not a sure thing."

Sure, yeah, the exiled prince is only going to _talk_ to his runaway. But he did create this colony, so maybe he isn't as bad as Matt assumed. Maybe.

Matt wants to be a good person again, but he isn't now—maybe he'll never get there. If whatever Lotor plans for the girl will save the rest of a dying people, so be it. It may not be _good,_ but it's good enough.

There's a big part of him that would rather just stay here, though. It's the most comfortable backwater hole they've found yet.

"Then let's go," he says anyway.

They go.

They say goodbye to the fawning Alteans, climb back into Lotor's stupid little ship, and fly back out of there.

The problem is not so much finding Voltron, as getting to them. Lotor says they have some kind of warship they keep Voltron itself in, and it can basically teleport wherever it wants, so just because they're heading towards it _now_ doesn't mean it'll still be anywhere nearby when they get there. They're also heading back into the empire—more like along its new edge, given what Voltron has accomplished, but it's not exactly empty space.

Both of them are tense, now.

It's probably for the best that they aren't seeing each other as much, lately. They take turns sleeping and flying, so even when they're both awake for the eight or so hours that that happens, one of them is focused elsewhere.

So it's a little weird that, during Matt's turn at the helm, Lotor comes and climbs into the little uncomfortable space behind the pilot's chair that is 100% not meant for sitting in (they used to do it a lot anyway, when they were only trying to hide—when they didn’t have a _goal_ ).

"Matt," he says, "there's something you ought to know."

He's going to kill the girl, sure. "All right, lay it on me."

"The colony... did not just protect the remaining Alteans. It served another purpose."

That is not what Matt was expecting. "And what's that?"

"It was a power source." Lotor sighs. "I needed quintessence to keep them hidden, to keep them alive—and to power my activities outside the empire. Any quintessence taken from the empire would have been traceable."

That is... possibly worse than Matt expected. "You used them as, what, batteries?"

"...In a way. Every once in a while, we'd invite a few of them away, with the promise of a new home, and then we would... harvest. I had to sacrifice a few for the good of the many. I do not think there is any way this girl could know, but if there is..."

"Then Voltron's gonna murder you on sight. Great!" Matt says drily. "They were probably going to do that anyway, you realize." It dawns on him, then. "Without me, you won't even get close. I'll have to talk to them."

"You may be right." Lotor reaches over to pat Matt's shoulder. "Thank you. Does it bother you?"

"Does it bother me? You're asking me?" Matt has to actually turn to look at him. "The Witch's pet? Me?"

"You told me you freed all her prisoners on your way out." Lotor actually sounds a little confused. "You didn't have to do that."

"I probably killed just as many before that," Matt points out. "Anyway, yeah, using people as batteries isn't great, but like, who am I to judge?" He pauses. "Is this gonna be a thing, talking about moral issues and the greater good and stuff, because I don't know if I'm okay with that. I'm irredeemable, at this point."

"If you're irredeemable, then what am I?" Lotor challenges.

Matt shrugs. "Alive?"

"Well." There's a shuffle as Lotor starts the wiggle-scoot thing to get back out of the cockpit. "So are you."

Touché.

They don't talk much, after that, except for what's necessary. But Matt can feel Lotor watching him, now and then, and maybe he's watching Lotor in turn sometimes. Some kind of reassessment, he feels. Because maybe both of them are realizing the other isn't who they thought.

In Matt's case, well, he hardly feels like he can pass judgment on Lotor. But he understands—he knows the pressure of living in the empire, the limitations, even when everyone thinks you're on their side. Lotor is nothing like him. But he wonders, if their positions were switched, if anything would have changed.

He wouldn't have pegged Lotor as someone who could stand to flatter his way into surviving Haggar, but now he's seen him greet a whole colony of people in his care without any indication he's sucked their families dry. So.

Maybe they're just both good liars, when it counts. And maybe Matt trusts him with his life, but nothing less. If it were worth it, Lotor would probably manipulate him without a second thought.

Matt... isn't sure he'd do likewise, anymore, and he tries not to think of that as a personal failing, and he tries not to think of why he wouldn't do it, either.

It's been maybe a couple weeks of chasing Voltron when Lotor sighs his way into the back of the cockpit again.

"Matt," he says. "We have a problem."

Matt glances back over his shoulder. "What kind of problem?"

"The serious kind," Lotor says. Matt turns in his seat to look at him.

"How serious?"

"We're running low on power."

Matt straightens—as much as he can, twisted in the seat like he is. "I didn't know this thing _could_ run low on power, I've never seen you refuel. Weren't we just at your quintessence colony, besides?"

"I believe the problem is in the energy storage. It's losing power faster than it should. It may need tweaking." Lotor sighs again. "We'll need to land to have a look at it, and refuel."

Matt can almost feel the ship shocking him already. "Cool, great, okay, where to? It's not like we're still in the empire or anything."

Lotor makes a face—almost a flinch, and then it's gone. "Somewhere uninhabited, if we can manage it."

"Right, obviously." Matt sets the ship to scanning its map. It finds something in seconds, just a system away. "How's this?"

Lotor scoots closer—has to all but climb into the chair with Matt to look. "It'll do."

So he changes course, and they touch down in the middle of a jungle. It's hot, and humid, and Matt is really wishing he'd picked up something other to wear other than his druid robes and clinging prison onesie—like clothing was ever a priority on their mad dash out of Galra space.

As it is, he strips down to the onesie to climb out of the ship after Lotor. He considers tying it off at his waist but he's not sure he wants Lotor to see his bare chest when he _himself_ hasn't seen his bare chest in... a while.

God, when was the last time he bathed?

"Still with me?" Lotor asks lightly, and Matt realizes he's been staring at nothing for a minute or so. He shakes himself out.

"Yeah," he says. "Where's the problem?"

Lotor does that flinch thing again, and just... points. Okay. Cool. They can both be weird, then. There's a panel already open on the side of the ship; Matt goes to take a look.

The energy storage—it's not quite right to call it a fuel tank—looks like it did last time, as far as he can tell. From Lotor's disgruntled mumbles as he pokes around, he's not finding anything either.

"Can't your ship just tell us somehow," Matt grumbles, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his greasy hand.

"It's a ship, Matt."

"It's not a normal ship, Lotor."

"Well, you used to be a druid. Go ahead and ask, if you can."

"You ask. It's your ship and it hates me."

Lotor sighs, but he shimmies out of the side of the ship and heads up to the entryway again. Matt continues poking around—checking connections, looking at the sundry mechanical/electrical/magical bits in the ship's innards.

Lotor is gone long enough that Matt _does_ strip down to his waist, because fuck it, he's got his own jungle going on inside the jumpsuit already and it's not like he can need a shower any more than he already does. He quietly apologizes to the ship whenever he drips sweat on something—it's probably not listening, but at least he's trying.

"Matt," Lotor calls as he finally returns, and Matt begins the process of extricating himself from the ship. "Could your mask still be gathering quintessence when you aren't wearing it? Oh."

Matt watches Lotor's eyes travel down across his chest, and back up to his face, and back down to his chest, and he doesn't know what to do with that so he just waits until Lotor's done.

"My mask?" he prompts.

"Oh. Right." Yeah, Matt really has no idea what's going on, but Lotor does manage to gather himself quickly. "Your mask. Could it be gathering quintessence while you aren't wearing it?"

Right. The druid mask. The one that collects quintessence to keep its wearer alive without food or water or sleep and has the unfortunate side effect of turning their eyes yellow. He still has it.

"Shit," Matt says. "I kept it. I can't believe I kept it."

He kept the druid robes, too—still wears them. He didn't even think about it until just now. He escaped, didn't he, but he still _kept_ these things—he's still wearing his goddamn prison jumpsuit. He should have gotten rid of them right away, but no, he just kept on wearing his shackles—

"Matt? You're doing it again," Lotor says.

—like he'd never escaped at all.

He wonders, in some crazy paranoid corner of his brain, if any of this is even real.

"Matt?"

"Smash it," Matt hears himself say. "Just fucking smash it."

He starts peeling himself out of the rest of his jumpsuit without really thinking about it. Lotor's still making alarmed noises—he grabs Matt's arm but Matt's already hopping on one leg trying to get the fabric off over his heel. He tosses the stupid thing aside and he's finally free.

"What are you _doing?_ " Lotor asks, and Matt hasn't seen him this flustered, ever, and that's kind of distantly interesting.

"I'm... uh." Matt looks down at himself. He's naked now. Probably should have seen that coming. "You're right. It's probably the mask. Get rid of it, I never should have kept it in the first place."

"Matt..."

Matt looks him in the eye.

"I haven't bathed in a year and a half," he says, firmly, and sets off into the jungle to find water, because that at least is something he can _deal with._

He finds a pond or something almost immediately, and he has enough presence of mind to realize that that's a good thing because as he is he probably couldn't find his way back otherwise. He wades in with somewhat less caution than is prudent and just... feels.

The gentle flow of the warm water against his legs. The sun on his shoulders. The sandy mud beneath his feet, the rocks and squelch of plant life. The stretch of old scars as he moves. The school of tiny fish-like creatures that come to investigate his leg hair—they nibble at it and it _tickles._

It's like, somewhere along the line, he'd forgotten he had a body at all. Maybe that was sort of the point.

He wades further in, cupping himself loosely with one hand because while the fish-things are kind of cute he doesn't want them near his dick, thanks—and he looks up and Lotor's found him, and Matt's got enough of his head back to feel a tingle of embarrassment creep up his spine.

Lotor's carrying a towel, though (actually probably a blanket, but it's close enough), and something Matt kind of hopes is soap. He's here. He might as well _actually_ get clean, if he can.

"Are you... feeling better?" Lotor asks, awkwardly, which isn't a tone Matt knew he could speak in. Today is just full of surprises.

Matt sighs. "Getting there."

"Here." Lotor holds out the maybe-soap. "If you want to bathe so badly."

He's not stepping into the water, which means Matt needs to wade back out to grab it, but whatever, the guy's already gotten the full frontal today. So he does that. Lotor averts his eyes.

It _is_ soap. Hallelujah.

"You could probably use a bath, too," Matt says, and regrets it immediately. He leaves it at that and wades back into the water.

Lotor doesn't respond. Matt proceeds to scrub himself more thoroughly than he's ever bothered to in his entire life up to now. When he looks back, Lotor has found a fallen log and is just sitting there with the towel in his lap, watching. He looks away when they make eye contact.

"If you're gonna watch, you have to get naked too," Matt tells him, and regrets that immediately too.

"Do you mean that?" Lotor asks, like if Matt says yes he'll actually do it.

"No," he says quickly. "But this is actually really cathartic. Plus it's cooling me off. Aren't you hot?"

Isn't he. Aw, fuck.

"I'm not convinced the atmosphere here isn't toxic to your species," Lotor says eventually. He's back to not looking at Matt, and his face is—flushed. He's blushing. Or, you know, overheating. Either way.

"Uh... maybe. I think I've just been realizing things." Is this something Matt wants to be honest about? No, actually, it isn't. He's said enough. "Never mind."

He goes back to bathing.

And when he's done, he slogs his way back out of the pond, and Lotor hands him the towel.

"I don't blame you for keeping the mask," Lotor says quietly, as Matt tries to dry himself without also overheating, or getting the towel muddy. And then, "I think I _will_ bathe, actually."

Well, maybe Matt isn't the only one realizing things today.

"Cool," Matt says. "Is this our only towel?"

"It's actually a blanket," Lotor says. "And, yes."

"Figures." Matt hangs it on a branch for him, and tries to not be obvious about watching Lotor shed his armor piece by piece, and then realizes he's still naked. "Uh. Are there any spare clothes on the ship? I don't want to... put my old stuff back on."

"You'll have to look," Lotor says. "I think so." He pauses, but he doesn't wait for Matt to leave before taking off his undershirt, and Matt was expecting the muscles but not the scars. Well.

They match, then.

He manages not to say _that_ out loud, at least, and heads back to the ship.

He does find something—he's pretty sure it's Lotor's pajamas, because it's a shirt and pants and they're soft and way too big, but he knows perfectly well the guy sleeps in his armor, so he doesn't feel too bad about putting them on. He has to use a stray piece of cord as a belt, and he looks ridiculous, but it's better than nothing and it's better than what he had before.

No shoes, though, and without the mask he won't be going on any spacewalks anytime soon. Maybe he can cut the boot part off the jumpsuit and just wear that—he hates the thought of putting any part of it back on but it'll hold him over until he can pick up something next time they restock.

He's not keeping the mask though, either way.

So he goes and gets it where it's tossed in his corner of their—quarters? Nest? Mobile backwater hidey-hole? And feels the tingle of the quintessence in his fingertips. He wonders if it's worth it to try and get the quintessence back out, somehow. He hates looking at the thing now, hates remembering looking at his own reflection and seeing it instead of his face, but between the two of them, he's got the training to do it.

So he takes the mask outside to where the side of the ship is still open. He puts one hand on the energy storage, holds the mask in the other. It'd be easier if he put it on but he's not going to do that.

Lotor comes back from the pond before he's done; he's carrying his armor and everything instead of wearing it, and he looks so much smaller wearing only the blanket wrapped around his waist. He looks Matt up and down, and his face twitches but this time it's more like a smile than a flinch.

"Was it the mask, after all?" Lotor asks.

"It's got more quintessence than it should, so probably," Matt says. "Can I borrow your sword?"

"Why?"

"To destroy it when I'm done."

Lotor considers him before he nods. "Fine. I'll check the energy levels." He pauses. "May I have my pants back, at least?"

That's fair, his shirt covers most of Matt's thighs on its own, and anyway, it's still stupidly hot. Matt nods.

"When I have a free hand," he says.

Lotor opens his mouth, closes it again. Yeah, maybe he's already seen Matt's dick, but it would definitely be weird if Matt told him he could take his pants back himself. And Matt's not putting the mask back on, and Lotor has probably realized that. He nods, and heads inside the ship.

Matt finishes transferring the quintessence, tosses the mask aside, and takes off the pants. He ties the cord around the outside of the shirt instead, like a tunic, and almost finds it amusing.

Lotor's sitting in the cockpit, still only wearing the blanket, and he looks back when Matt enters. Matt tosses the pants into his lap.

"There ya go," he says. "Sword?"

"In the back. Thank you."

Matt gets the sword and goes to town. He doesn't stop until his hands sting and the shape of the mask is unrecognizable; when he crouches down to pick up one of the pieces, there's no longer a tingle of quintessence.

Then he regards the prison jumpsuit and—he was going to take just the boots, but maybe he should take the crotch part too because he's going commando in a tunic right now, but then it's like he's just cutting the knees out of them and—

It's temporary. It's just temporary. He keeps the lower half and flings the upper into the jungle; it gets caught in a tree, out of reach. He goes inside and gets the robes and tosses those into the jungle too. Lotor (now wearing pants) rejoins him as he stands by the ship and watches them sway in the breeze.

"Catharsis, hm?" he says.

"Something like that," Matt responds. Maybe he should cut his hair, too. It's getting long; he hasn't thought about it in a while.

"We can go, when you're ready," Lotor adds. "Whatever you did with the mask, worked."

"In a bit." If he's gonna go back to wearing half his prison outfit, he can at least wash that, too.

So he does, and they take off again, and Matt flies but Lotor sits silently behind him for a while and this has all just been weird, so weird, and he'd sort of like to forget it all happened but even after Lotor finally puts a shirt on (which is good but also a shame) he's mostly not wearing his armor, for days on end, and Matt's stuck looking like some kind of medieval serf so he really _can't_ forget.

He feels better once they do finally go somewhere inhabited and get a hold of new clothing—okay, he steals some while escaping after someone recognizes him and pulls a gun on him, at that point all bets are off anyway—so. There's that, at least.

Lotor still looks at him strangely sometimes.

They're both eating in the back with the ship on autopilot when Matt finally says, "What _is_ it?"

Lotor actually flinches this time. "What do you mean?"

"You just flinched."

"I did not."

"You did. You flinched when I asked you."

"I do not—I am not the sort of person who _flinches_ ," Lotor says, drawing himself up, and Matt remembers Lotor is also a liar and also wanted badly by the empire, and his own father wants him dead, and what does that do to a person?

"It's fine if you are," he says, and Lotor deflates like a punctured balloon.

"...What?"

"It's fine if you flinch," Matt says, and there's a corner of his mind running through all the shit that brought him to this moment, again. "I just wanted to know why you keep looking at me like I'm... I dunno. You keep looking at me funny."

And Lotor inflates again. "I don't know what you mean," he says haughtily, and goes back to eating.

"I'm not mad," Matt says, only as a prelude, but weirdly that's the thing to puncture him again. Lotor stops eating and stares at him, and Matt is just as shocked, for a moment.

"I'm... not mad?" he repeats slowly. "Did you think I was mad at you? Why?"

Lotor puts down his fork, breathes in deeply through his nose, and says, "I don't know."

Matt knows that tone. That's the "I know but I don't want to tell you" tone, or "I have my suspicions and I don't want to know if they're right," or "telling you will give too much of myself away."

"Well," Matt says. "I'm not mad at you."

"Okay," Lotor says. "That's... good."

They sit there and stare at each other for a minute.

"Right, good talk," Matt says, and resumes eating. Lotor does too, after a moment.

But as Lotor goes to bed and Matt goes to sit in the cockpit again, Matt stops, and he says, "We're in this together, right?"

And Lotor says, "We are," and almost smiles, so whatever's been going on, it's probably okay.

Probably.

Which means he's free to worry about the fact that they're catching up to Voltron, and what that entails. Which is humans. And maybe Keith, specifically, who didn't know Matt anywhere near as well as Shiro did but will still, you know, recognize him? And Shiro must have told him what _he_ went through, so he'll have... some idea, at least, of what kind of environment Matt was in, even if he'll probably assume Matt was on the receiving end.

Either way, Matt can't go into this anonymously, and that, frankly, terrifies him. At least Lotor knows where he stands with these people.

Considering how often they get recognized somewhere, it really shouldn't be a surprise that Voltron gets wind of them—it should be a surprise that it took this long. Matt's asleep when it happens—he wakes to the ship shuddering and Lotor shouting, and scrambles shirtless up to the front to find Lotor pleading with someone on a screen not to shoot, and the someone says, "Matt?" and—

Well, that's that. It's Keith, he's seen him, there's no turning back.

"What are you doing on _Lotor's_ ship?" Keith asks.

"I'd ask what you're doing in Voltron," Matt says tiredly, going for a grin and probably failing, "but I already knew you were a paladin. It's a long story. Please don't kill us."

"I. Yeah. Team, pull back. Allura?"

Muffled: "We're just going to let him land?"

"He's got—Matt, are you a hostage?"

"Nope."

"He's got one of ours, voluntarily. We should at least hear him out."

One of ours. Matt feels a little nauseous.

They land in a hangar and Matt is just about able to grab his shirt before the ramp lowers. He trails after Lotor, who's got his empty hands held up as he steps into the hangar. Matt follows to see all of the paladins with their weapons out, arrayed before them. And then the green one lowers theirs.

"Matt?" they say, and he knows that voice—

Katie comes barrelling past Lotor and into Matt's chest, and Matt wraps his arms around her out of reflex but— _Katie_ is here? His _baby sister?_ Katie is—

He can't—he can't do this.

"Oh, god, Katie," he says finally, "What are you _doing_ here?"

"Looking for you," she says. "I knew you had to be out here, I never stopped looking. I knew we'd find you."

"Katie," he says. "Pidge." He can't do this. He lets go of her and she steps back, looking up at him with tears in her eyes. "Oh, fuck. I can't do this. I have to go."

"Matt?" Her face falls. He takes a step back.

"You... I didn't think you'd ever..." His little sister. She's... he can't be around her anymore. He's not a good person anymore. He turns around and heads back toward the ship.

"Matt!" Lotor calls.

Matt stops, entirely against his will.

"Remember why we're here."

Why _are_ they here? Right, the girl. The missing girl from Lotor's battery colony. Matt sighs and turns around.

"Okay. We're looking for someone," he says.

"They mean me," says a voice he doesn't recognize, and there she is, standing behind the paladins who look less ready to fight and more confused now. Except they all tense right back up when she speaks. "I'm not going back."

Matt has a terrible feeling about this.

"She told us what you've done, Lotor." That's the princess, he recognizes her. "I won't let you use another Altean for _power_ again."

"Oh," says Lotor, quietly, so only Matt can hear.

"You said there was no way she could know," Matt says to him, pointedly, which is when Katie finally steps back.

"You _knew?_ " she says. "And you still came here with him?"

And this is why Matt didn't want to come.

"Pidge," he says, "listen. You're the coolest little sister ever, okay, it's incredible that you're a paladin and I'm really proud of you, and I love you very much. _Pretend you never saw me here._ Just forget about me. I'm dead. Hold a funeral or something. Good luck with everything, love you, bye."

He turns around and again and leaves the hangar in silence. He climbs back up into the ship, settles himself in the cockpit, and starts up the engine.

The engine doesn't start. He tries again and it zaps him. Did Lotor follow him on? Probably not. Ugh.

He can't go back out there, though, can't shatter the illusion further. He can't. He curls up in the pilot's seat and waits for death.

Footsteps come up the ramp, and they aren't Lotor's.

"I never told her you were the empire's second most wanted," Keith says quietly behind him. "I don't know if she found out on her own. But I knew."

"Cool," Matt tells him flatly.

"We met Ulaz."

Fuck. "I don't want to hear this."

"He told Shiro everything."

Double fuck. "Stop."

"Do you know what Shiro told me about it?"

Matt turns in his seat and the tears gathered in his eyes spill over. "Keith, fuck _off_ —"

"He said he was glad you were alive." Keith glares right back at him. "He said it wasn't any worse than what he'd done, and he'd hoped he'd gotten you sent to your father, and he was sorry he couldn't do more. But he was glad you'd found a way to survive."

Matt's heart twists in his chest, painfully. Shiro was too good—anything he'd done in the arena couldn't have changed who he was. Matt changed, though. And Shiro became a paladin when he got out, but Matt just _ran._

"That doesn't make me feel better," Matt says. The tears keep coming but he can't sniffle, can't sob, like his body has forgotten how to cry. "It wasn't worth it."

"Then make it worth it." Keith softens and he scoots into the space behind the seat like Lotor always used to. "Shiro never said this, but he loved being a paladin, and I think it was because it made him feel like everything was worth it. You can do that, too."

"What," Matt says, watery, "be a paladin?"

"If one of the lions will take you. Or something else. There are plenty of ways to help."

Matt considers that, staring at his knees. He... _did_ want to do good things, again. That was why he came—to rescue Lotor's missing girl, who of course has gone and messed everything up now, but the intent was there.

"We came here trying to help," he says eventually. "Lotor was worried the empire would find her and then find the colony, and kill them all."

"And he told you what he was doing to the colony?"

"I know it should bother me."

"Well, yes, but—he _told_ you?"

"Yeah, he..." Wanted to find out if Matt would turn on him before they got to Voltron? But then he was risking not going at all—risking the whole colony. But then... "Trusted me?"

That's a revelation. And Matt just tried to run on him. Woops.

Matt looks at Keith. Keith raises an eyebrow.

"Okay," Matt says, and heaves himself up out of the seat. "But don't tell Pidge anything."

"You should tell her yourself," Keith says, which, no. But he scoots out of the ship and Matt follows, reluctantly.

They've got Lotor in shackles. All the times Lotor saved him, and Matt went and let this happen.

"Okay," he says, "wait a second." He turns to Keith. "If I get a chance to make it worth it, so does he."

"He killed dozens of innocents," the princess says firmly. "He cannot be trusted."

He looks her in the eye and says, "So have I."

There's a very pregnant pause.

"Matt," Katie says, " _What_."

Okay. He really does have to tell her.

"I was a _druid,_ Pidge," he sighs. "I was Haggar's _personal assistant._ If I get a chance to make good, so does he. But if he belongs in chains, so do I." And he holds out his wrists.

She steps back. "No. You've been—brainwashed, or something, you can't have..."

"I did."

"Matt," Lotor says, oddly gentle. "Stop."

Matt turns to look at him, along with everyone else.

"We tried," he continues. "I know I deserve this. You can do enough good for both of us."

"I'd be dead if it weren't for you." Matt points at him. "Coming here was _your_ idea. I can't just let this happen."

"And I've brought you back to your people," Lotor says simply. "It was worth it."

His words sink like a stone as everything unravels. It was Lotor who told him the paladins were human; it was Lotor who said the girl must be in their hands, and it _had_ been Keith who had taken her, but not as a paladin, as a Galran _spy._ For all they knew, she could have been in the hands of those Marmalade guys or whatever they're called—but it was Voltron Lotor brought them to.

To bring him to his people.

Matt's not surprised he had an ulterior motive—he's surprised it was _this._

" _Lotor_ ," he says, but Lotor shakes his head. He turns to the princess instead.

"I will cooperate," he says, and she and a couple of the other paladins lead him away, leaving Matt and Katie and Keith alone in the hangar.

"Fuck," Matt says, and falls to his knees. " _Fuck_."

"Pidge, let him explain," he distantly hears Keith say. "It's complicated."

" _You_ knew?" she demands, and he says, "Some," and then there's a hand on his arm.

"Matt," Keith says. "Let's move this out of the hangar, okay?"

"I'm in crisis," says Matt, maybe an explanation, maybe a warning.

"You can continue your crisis somewhere more comfortable."

He lets Keith drag him back up to his feet and lead him away from their ship, up so many stairs and down so many hallways, until they finally enter some kind of lounge and Keith lets him go. Matt sinks onto the nearest cushioned surface.

Katie sits down across from him, arms crossed. He wishes a little bit that he'd kept his mask, now, or at least the robes. Maybe it would have been easier then. They'd have known right away and he could have just been locked up with Lotor and had none of these revelations.

"Explain," she says, and he takes a deep breath, and he does. All the things he swore he'd never tell anyone, when he met up with Lotor, when they got to that damned colony and saw all those happy innocent people, when he saw Keith on that security feed and everything began its slow collapse. He starts with meeting Haggar, talks through Ulaz's departure, their attack on the station, his discovery of Champion's identity and subsequent destruction of the cloning facility—Keith gets twitchy, here—and, finally, his escape.

"Lotor found me, and we figured we were safer together," he finishes. "So we ran until we got to his colony, and then that girl was missing and we saw Keith on the security footage, and we came here. That's all."

Katie is staring at her lap. Keith has sunk onto the bench near him. A couple of the other paladins had shown up somewhere in the midst of his story and are hovering behind Katie—the princess isn't with them.

"Wow," Keith says.

Katie gets up and, without a word, leaves the room. Whatever's left of Matt's shriveled heart squeezes painfully.

"She'll... come around?" Keith offers.

"She used to look up to me," Matt says. "I let her down." Could he have done all he did, knowing she'd find out? He's not sure—he'd be dead by now, though. Would that be better?

"Well," Keith says, and then he doesn't seem to know how to continue. The other two paladins leave again.

"What happened to Shiro?" Matt asks eventually, because he's a sucker for pain.

Keith sighs and suddenly he looks so much older than Matt remembers. "He's... sort of here. He's trapped in the black lion, but only his… soul. Or quintessence, I don't know. His body is... gone."

Matt goes cold—it sounds like what Haggar used to do to the officers who let her down, the monsters she created. " _How?_ "

Keith shrugs, fingers twisting around each other in his lap. "We don't know. He says he died, but..." He looks up. "The clone facility. Is there anything left?"

Matt's had more feelings today than he has in years. "Keith... you can't just replace him. It's not the same and you know it. Besides, she probably intended them to be sleeper agents or spies or something."

Keith shakes his head. "Not like that. I just wonder if we could... get a body for him."

"Oh," says Matt. "Well, I blew it up."

Keith looks down.

"But I never went there, so... maybe there _could_ be something left? Assuming she didn't get there first."

Keith looks up again. "It's better than nothing," he says. "Do you know where it is?"

"Not really, no."

Keith takes a deep breath and stands. "Okay. Let's find you a place to stay. Are you hungry?"

"I guess."

"Come on." Keith gestures, and Matt follows and slowly comes around to the realization that he's probably never gonna get to that backwater hole after all. He's gonna get roped into this and that and he's not going anywhere without Lotor anyway; so much for running away. Now he's in the middle of things again.

Keith leads him to the kitchen before heading off to talk to whoever about, presumably, finding the clone facility—is he in charge? It kinda seems like he's in charge, except there's the princess, so who knows. Matt eats and it's weird that Lotor isn't here eating with him. He _wants_ Lotor to be here with him.

Is it a good thing they're not going to be all up in each other's business all the time anymore? Probably, but it doesn't feel right.

Whatever. Whatever. He puts his bowl in the sink and sets out to wander. It definitely doesn't feel right that he's allowed to do this when Lotor is locked up somewhere but there's nothing he can do about it so he's not going to _think_ about it. He's good at not thinking about things.

So he wanders. He finds a lot of empty, dusty rooms—so much space, and only, what, half-a-dozen-and-change people in it? He stumbles across the lounge again, too, and gets close enough to the bridge to hear an argument before he changes direction.

He ends up back down in the hangars again, but this time it’s the one the lions are kept in. He's seen them before, but they're different up close. Imposing. It makes him a little nervous—if they were sentient, which side would they think he's on?

He stops in front of the black lion, and looks up, up at its dull yellow eyes.

"Hi, Shiro," he says. "I hear you're in there somewhere."

He pauses. The lion doesn't so much as twitch.

"Yeah, you probably can't hear me. That's fine," he says. "I just wanna say I'm sorry. You saved my life and I went and wasted it. And Haggar had you for a while and I didn't do a thing. I mean, I didn't know. But I still could've... done something."

Still no response.

"I guess if we do find a body and get you into it I'll have to say this again," he continues. "I wonder if it'll be easier or harder. Probably harder, since I'll know you're actually listening. I don't really want to tell people about everything, but I think you deserve to know."

Nothing. Matt sighs and sits on the ground.

"I told my sister. She didn't take it too well. I mean, she looked up to me, so it's not a surprise. Still sucks. Your duckling took it pretty well, though. He's really grown up since we left, huh?" Matt leans his chin in his hand. "I bet you never asked him out. Guess it's kinda too late. Unless he does manage to get you a new body, which is probably impossible, but I wouldn't put it past him to find a way. I guess we'll see. You'd better get your shit together if he does."

That doesn't get a rise out of him either, or if it does, the lion isn't showing it.

"I don't even know the other kids so I can't really comment on them. I'm pretty sure the princess hates me already, though. She definitely hates Lotor and Lotor likes me so, clearly I'm an enemy." He swallows. "Okay, I said he likes me without thinking, but I've just realized it might be kinda true, and that's a whole thing. A whole, big... thing. I dunno what to do about it. We aren't exactly—we can't just… do whatever. I mean, he's chained up somewhere right now because he did some pretty bad stuff, and I knew that, and... well, so did I, but I'm out here and he's in there and... it's complicated." He slumps further, elbows on knees. "And I shouldn't like him. And he shouldn't like me. _I_ don't like me. And—god. I shouldn't be alive. I don't deserve it." He drops his face into his hands. "I don't deserve to be alive. But I did so much _shit_ to stay alive, anyway. And now I'm here and I..."

The sob surprises him. He curls further into himself till his head all but rests against his crossed shins, and he cries, and cries, and when he can't cry anymore he sits up and he doesn't feel any better, just tired.

"Well," he says hoarsely, eventually. "Good talk, Shiro."

He gets up, slowly, and trudges away.

He goes to sleep after that. The bed is a little too comfortable, but sleeping on the floor seems too dramatic, so he doesn't.

The next day, he tries to visit Lotor. The princess won't let him into the dungeon or whatever; she stops him at the door.

"You cannot see him," she says.

"What do you think I'm gonna do?" Matt says. He's already so tired of this. "Let him out? I don't even know what he's in."

She glares. "The only reason you're not in there with him is that you're Pidge's family. Don't forget it."

"I'm sure you won't let me," he says, "but whatever. I'll go." And he goes.

He meets the other paladins properly, that day; they're ambivalent about him at best, probably because they're on Katie's side. He doesn't see Katie. Keith is the only one who'll eat with him.

"We identified a few possible locations for the clone facility you mentioned," he says. "The Blade of Marmora helped. We're going to head to the first after today's diplomacy stuff." Keith eyes him over his bowl. "Are you coming?"

"To the diplomacy stuff?"

"To the clone facility."

Matt takes a deep breath. He absolutely does not want to, but he probably should. He owes them all that much.

"Yeah," he says, and Keith nods, apparently satisfied.

They go, and they find nothing.

"I mentioned I blew it up, right?" Matt says as Keith stares pensively out the bridge windows.

"There'd still be some sign," Keith says, and turns on his heel. "We'll keep trying."

Matt sneaks down in the middle of the night to try and visit Lotor, and this time the princess isn't there to stop him. Lotor should probably be sleeping, but he isn't, which Matt helpfully points out as he approaches the energy wall surrounding the little prison cell.

"You ought to be sleeping too," Lotor says, of course.

"I'm sure someone will come to chase me away soon enough," Matt says. "I'm sorry, by the way."

He sits on the floor, and Lotor sits opposite him, on the other side of the wall.

"For what?" Lotor asks.

"For... letting them lock you up. Or not being locked up myself. I don't know. I'm sorry in general."

Lotor smiles a little, and it's the kind of look Matt might mistake for affectionate, but then, maybe it's not a mistake after all. "You're a mess."

"You're right. I'm a mess." Can't argue with that.

"And you shouldn't be sorry. Things are fine as they are."

That's harder not to argue with. "Uh, no?"

"Matt. This is the best I could hope for." Lotor places his hand against the wall. "I'm not dead. You're with your family, or at least, part of it. We can work out the rest from here."

"From inside your cell?" Matt asks, a little desperately.

"If need be." Lotor taps his fingers on the wall. "I have information they need, and you will be able to sway them where I cannot."

"If it were up to the princess, I'd be in there with you," Matt says. "My sister won't even talk to me. Keith is the only one who'll give me the time of day."

Lotor's brow furrows. "Give you the time of day?"

"It's an expression. Like if I asked someone what time of day it was, he'd be the only who'd respond."

"Ah." Lotor nods. "Keith is the black paladin, yes? If you can sway _him,_ the rest will follow. Even your sister."

He might be right about that. Matt sighs, and lifts his hand to mirror Lotor's much larger one.

"This isn't what I wanted," he says.

"I know," Lotor says. "I'm sorry."

Matt pauses. "It's weird not having you all up in my business all the time," he admits.

Lotor smiles again. "That's another expression?"

"Yeah."

"Then rest assured that if we work for it, I can be 'all up in your business' again."

That surprises a wheezy chuckle out of Matt, a sound he barely recognizes. Lotor smiles a little wider.

And then the door opens behind them.

"You know you're not supposed to be in here, Matt," Keith says, which is probably the best possibility in terms of getting caught.

Matt sighs. "I know." He stands up, taking his hand away from the wall; it's another moment before Lotor lowers his. "...See you later, Lotor."

Lotor nods. "You will," he says.

Keith waits until Matt's walked out past him, and shuts the door behind them.

"If anyone else catches you in there, it'll be trouble," he warns.

"I know," Matt says. "I wanted to see him, so sue me. I'm not gonna just let him out, that'll be _more_ trouble."

"Why?" Keith asks.

Matt side-eyes him. "Why would it be trouble? Do I really need to explain?"

"No, why did you want to see him?" Keith has led them to an elevator; he presses the button and turns to face him, which means Matt has no excuse not to meet his eye.

"He's saved my life a dozen times by now," Matt says carefully. "We're..." Friends doesn't seem right. "Close."

That almost sounds worse. Keith blinks and doesn't seem to know what to do with it, either. The elevator opens, and Matt can finally break eye contact under the premise of stepping in; Keith follows and the elevator hums upwards.

"Do you trust him?" Keith asks eventually.

That's a hard question, and maybe a little bit of a complicated answer, but Matt decides to go for honesty anyway.

"I... Hm. I don't trust him to tell me all his plans or always take what I want into consideration. He more or less tricked me into coming here." Keith's face goes hard and Matt holds up a hand. "But I trust him with my life. He's not gonna let me die, no matter what. Not if he can help it. And I'll do the same for him."

"That's..." Keith pauses. The elevator dings and they step out. "Kind of backwards."

"We're the two most wanted men in the entire empire, besides you guys—maybe _more_ than you guys. If we didn't keep each other alive, who would? We'd be alone and dead. Better to be alive together, even if we were kind of shitty to each other." Matt thinks about that. "Though we mostly weren't. It was just the big stuff. Like coming here or not."

"You're saying Lotor was _mostly_ nice to you."

"Yeah. I mean, we were stuck in a tiny ship together for, what, months? We _had_ to get along."

Keith stops; they've reached the living quarters. "I don't know if I could have done it," he says. "Not with him."

"After a year and a half with Haggar, Lotor was a piece of cake." And Matt's done talking about this. He heads towards his room. "Goodnight, Keith."

"Goodnight," Keith says, but he sounds somehow unsure about it.

Matt enters his room and flops into his bed. He's pretty sure Keith thinks he's nuts now—and Matt can't really blame him. Who'd trust someone with their life if they can't be trusted to say what they'll do with it?

But then, Lotor thought he was doing Matt a favor, didn't he? Even to his own detriment. And Matt hadn't exactly explained why he didn't want to be here—well, it's more Lotor's fault than his. But Lotor didn't bring him here out of malice; Matt firmly believes that.

He wonders if Keith thinks he's got Stockholm Syndrome or something. But Matt knows his own mind—he's had enough experience keeping the core of himself locked deep, of examining his thoughts for corruption. He is the one thing he can be sure of.

And so he is sure that he loves Lotor—for some variety of love—and if there's a reason, it's because Lotor has genuinely saved his ass multiple times and not because he couldn't leave. It was always voluntary, even if there was an obvious right choice.

And if he ever doubts that Lotor doesn't love him back, he only needs to remember that smile.

Matt buries his face in his pillow. Wasn't he going to not think about this? He shouldn't have gone to see Lotor, then, but he couldn't... not.

He surfaces when someone knocks on his door. It's late for people to be up—maybe it's Keith come to accuse him of something.

"Come in," Matt calls, and the door opens, and it isn't Keith. It's Katie.

Matt sits up. Katie stops in the doorway.

"You've killed people," she says quietly to the floor.

Here we go. Matt sighs. "Yeah."

She looks up, then, though. "So did Shiro." And she comes in and sits next to him on his bed. "I've been thinking. You both killed people to survive."

"...Yeah?"

"So why can I forgive him for it, but it's so much harder with you?" She looks straight at him, and the light glints off the tears gathering in her eyes.

No reason, is what Matt kind of wants to say. But he wants to be good, and being good means being honest, and she's his _sister_ and deserves honesty either way.

"You knew me better," he says carefully. His heart burns in his chest. "And the people _he_ killed had a fighting chance."

"I keep thinking," she says, "that the people he killed might have survived if he weren't there. I think the ones you killed would have died anyway. Shouldn't that make it... better, I guess? Well, not _better,_ but..."

"I guess you could see it like that," Matt says, though he never had before, and doesn't now.

"It was them or him... and them or you. Right?"

"Until I had the chance to escape," Matt says.

"And when you did, you set them free."

"Yeah."

Katie nods, but her face is still scrunched like she's trying not to cry. "I get that. I keep trying to logic my way through it, and it all, y'know, balances out. But then—but then—" She sobs. "It's _you_."

Matt reaches out to her, and, miraculously, she leans into him. He wraps his arms around her tight and she sobs into his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs. "I'm sorry." What else can he say?

"I heard you talking to Shiro," she chokes. "I'm glad you're alive. No matter what. I missed you so much."

Maybe that should have been obvious, but it still takes Matt's breath away. He squeezes her tighter, and for a while, they just hold each other.

Something settles, somewhere within him. This feels right in a way nothing has for a long time now.

"She did horrible things to Shiro," she says eventually, steadier now but still quiet.

"I know," he says. "It kills me." It does.

Quieter, "To you, too. Can we make her pay?"

"You already are," Matt says. "But now I'll help."

"Good." She sniffles and finally leans away, but he leaves an arm around her shoulders. "...What about Lotor?"

"What about him?" Matt asked carefully. "He wants to help."

"You sure?" she asks—but not in a dubious way, and for that he's thankful.

"He brought me here even knowing you guys would hate him, and he doesn't want to die. If he can tell you anything useful, he will." That much Matt is sure of. "And I think he did genuinely want to make sure that girl was safe. I saw him at the colony, and it's probably hard to believe, but he cares about them a lot."

She makes a face. "So much so that he was draining their quintessence."

Matt shrugs. "I'm not saying it wasn't terrible. But you need power to keep a place like that running, and if he'd taken it from the empire, somehow, they'd have noticed and known he was up to something. He _was_ exiled before you guys showed up and killed Zarkon the first time. So... sacrifice a few, save the rest."

Her brow scrunches. "You really believe that?"

"I... believe that sometimes there isn't a 'good' choice. It's the trolley problem. You let the group of people die on the track you're on... or you switch to another and kill one instead. He chose the latter." Matt takes a deep breath. "I don't know if there was another solution. I wasn't there. But I do know he's been trying to find an alternate power source for a long time."

"Trolley problem," Katie mutters to herself. "I guess we can ask him things tomorrow and see what he knows."

"Good," Matt says. She squints at him.

"You _like_ him," she accuses.

He sighs. "Yeah."

"He fought us, before."

"He probably had a reason. It might not even have been a good one," Matt admits. "If I had to guess, though, he was keeping up appearances or trying to keep you guys out of the way so he could do his own stuff. But I don't know. Ask him about it."

"You're making excuses for him," she points out. "You're trying not to, but you are."

Matt runs a hand through his hair—he still needs that haircut. "Look, I've never known him to be actually malicious. He always has a reason and the reason isn't to be mean." Though he did use to insult Matt back when they were still cogs in the Galra machine—but maybe he was keeping up appearances then, too, and maybe trying to subtly point out Matt was really still a prisoner, like he didn't already know—or maybe Lotor _was_ just being mean, because Matt was an underling of one of the few people Lotor truly hates, and then the whole escape thing changed his mind. Either way, he'll leave that part out.

Katie sighs. "So he's actually a good person?"

"He's no worse than I am." Probably. Matt doesn't know _everything_ he's done.

"Is that why you like him?"

Matt flops back on his bed so he can talk at the ceiling instead of meeting her eyes. "I like him because... he's saved my life a lot, even when it would've been easier not to. Every time, even when it put him in danger, he came to save me. And he went from everything to nothing and isn't a little bitch about it—I always thought he was a spoiled brat, but he turned out to be... practical. Adaptable. It was a nice surprise." He scrunches his eyes shut. He's not sure where all this is coming from—he's learning his reasons right along with her. But then, he _has_ been trying _not_ to think about it. "And I think it takes guts to hide the survivors of a race his father tried to exterminate right under his nose. And... I only _mostly_ understand him. I guess that makes him interesting. We used to talk a _lot,_ until we got to his colony and everything got turned upside down."

"...So, not Stockholm Syndrome."

Matt snorts. "No. But be sure to tell Keith you came to that conclusion, because I'm pretty sure he was thinking it, too."

Katie tips over and curls up next to him. "I will. I think we'll have a harder time convincing Allura, though."

"One step at a time," Matt sighs. "Better to start with those other kids, maybe."

"Hunk and Lance?"

"Yeah, them."

Katie hums. "Can I stay here tonight?"

"Go for it."

She snuggles closer. He lets her pillow her head on his shoulder, wraps his arm loosely around her. She's asleep long before he is, but he's feeling better than he has in a while, so it's fine. He sleeps eventually.

He sleeps in, too, which is a treat, but evidently Katie doesn't, because she's gone when he wakes up. She probably had her paladinly duties or whatever, but he's bound to see her again later.

God, he missed her so much.

He drags himself out of bed eventually and takes a real shower, which is also a treat, and he's almost feeling like a person again—kind of like that time in the jungle pond, except more civilized, and with fewer alien fish threatening to nibble things they shouldn't be nibbling—by the time he gets himself out into the lounge and finds Hunk.

"Hey, Matt!" Evidently Katie has already talked to him, because he's much friendlier today. "Keith said to tell you to head up to the bridge! I guess we're gonna go check out another druid facility today."

"That was fast," Matt says. Yesterday may feel like an age ago but it really was only yesterday.

Hunk shrugs. "We were in the area. Here's hoping we find something this time."

"Yeah," Matt says, and heads up to the bridge.

Keith is there, of course, but so is the princess. She eyes him when he enters, but he was _invited,_ thanks, and she must know or she'd say something. She turns away instead.

"Matt," Keith greets. "Good timing. Have a look."

He points out the window—or the windshield or projection screen or whatever the hell's going on on the bridge that lets them see outside. There's certainly wreckage. It's not recent, but it's not ancient, either, so the timeframe could be right.

"It's possible," Matt says eventually. "There's nothing that I can say a definite yes to, though. This debris is pretty generic."

"What are we looking for?"

"Any sort of pod or tube you can imagine a mad scientist growing a person in," Matt says flatly. "Quintessence residue." He pauses. "Bodies."

Keith makes a face.

"Look, quintessence is pretty volatile, but I don't know how big the place was. You _want_ to see bodies. That's the whole point of this."

"'Bodies' just sounds..." Keith's voice trails off. "Whatever. Let's get down there and look around."

"After you," Matt says, and he follows Keith off the bridge without the princess ever saying a word. He might have to deal with that eventually. Maybe it'll sort itself out. Maybe he can still run away? Yeah, sounds good.

Katie volunteers to come along, so the three of them climb into the black lion. Matt's got a borrowed space suit now, and it's kind of infuriating that it fits perfectly.

"Tell Shiro I say hello," Matt says, looking around the cockpit as Keith sits in front.

"Tell him yourself when we get him out of here," Keith says, and it's probably not meant to be rude. They launch.

The black lion glides easily through the scattered wreckage. It was a station, or something, on the edge of an asteroid belt; they don't have to go far into it to find where the wreckage came from. It's definitely Galran; it's _probably_ druid.

"See anything?" Keith asks.

"It's not a definite yes," Matt says. "But it's not a no either.... Can we get in closer?"

"We can head out and take a look," Keith says.

Matt's suit doesn't have a jetpack, of course, but Keith and Katie's do, so they take him by the arms and the three of them fly out of the lion's mouth and into what's left of the station. Matt leads the way from there, pulling himself down long dark hallways; it's sort of familiar, though he knows he's never been there. Probably every druid lair is just built sort of the same—he can still sort of feel the quintessence in every surface he touches, though not nearly enough for this to be the place they're looking for.

There are cells here, just cells. Just another prison. He turns to signal to the others that it's time to go.

Katie's holding something.

Matt launches himself at her before he can think about it, tears it out of her hands—it sparks in his until he tosses it aside, hard, and it snaps on impact with the wall. He stomps on it but without gravity he just propels himself upward at the first crunch of druid tech beneath his boot. Keith grabs his arm before he can go in for more but the shape of it is still recognizable, and he's not letting that shit get anywhere near his _sister,_ not where it can hurt her—he tries to shake Keith off but Keith drags him away and without a jetpack of his own Matt can't pull away.

Katie gets in his face, blocking his view of the torture device, and she's saying something but their helmets aren't synced with his so he can't hear her. He tries to shift her out of the way but she grabs onto him where he grabs onto her, and starts up her jetpack too, and they carry him out kicking and panting.

It activated. It still activated when he held it—it wasn't enough to get rid of the mask, the robes, something in him is still _druid_ and he doesn't know how to get _rid_ of it now.

He doesn't notice they're back in the lion until the artificial gravity kicks back in and he crumples to the floor; he doesn't hear anything but the harsh echo of his own breathing until Keith wrenches his helmet off him and says, "What the _fuck_ was that?"

"Torture device," Matt pants. "Druid torture device."

"...You broke it," says Keith.

"Could've broken it more," says Matt.

"Matt," Katie says slowly, "when you grabbed it... your eyes turned yellow."

" _Pidge_ ," Keith hisses. Matt stares at her.

Fuck.

They weren't yellow in the mirror, this morning, when he showered, were they? Did he look? He doesn't like _seeing_ himself—how many times has this happened before without him knowing? It was the quintessence that did it but he _destroyed that fucking mask,_ there shouldn't be _enough_ to still _change_ him but one touch to a—to a damned _torture device_ and he's right back where he started.

He'll never be free. He'll never be free. He'll never be free. He's an idiot to think he'll ever be free.

Matt curls into himself and wishes he'd never come here. He's broken forever and unfit to be around people, especially good people, especially people who aren't broken and can't know what this is like. He shouldn't even be around Lotor—Lotor had every reason to break but he always held it together, didn't he? It's only Matt who cracked. Matt, who's weak, who's a coward, a failure, a _danger,_ who doesn't deserve to live—

Who's tumbling onto the hangar floor back on the castle ship. He ends up flat on his back, looking up at the black lion, who he'd _swear_ is glaring at him until it sits back out of his view again. Katie and Keith take its place.

"Get rid of me," Matt murmurs, or thinks he murmurs—he's not sure. "I can't be here. I don't deserve it. I'll hurt someone."

Katie runs off. Maybe that's good. Keith hauls him up off the floor, which is probably not good, because Matt is pretty sure Keith won't toss him out an airlock. That's not what good people do, and Keith is good. Matt isn't good. He can toss himself out the airlock.

They're in an elevator. Keith still has him half-draped over his shoulder.

"What if I hurt you," Matt mumbles, because if touching the thing activated it, what will touching a person do?

"You aren't," Keith says. So he did say _that_ aloud. Huh.

Matt doesn't realize they've made it down to the dungeon until a door opens and he spots Lotor ahead. Katie's there too, and everyone else, but Lotor will at least sort of understand and that gets Matt's feet back under him. He unhooks himself from Keith and stumbles up to the barrier on his own.

"Lotor, I suck," he blurts.

"No," Lotor says firmly. "You're quintessence-sensitive and traumatized. You do not 'suck.'"

Matt presses his forehead against the barrier, feeling vaguely betrayed. "No, I suck. I'm still a fucking druid. Why can't I be _better?_ "

"You _are_ better," Lotor says, kneeling so that his face in Matt's line of sight again. He's frowning. "You are not a druid. She doesn’t have you anymore."

"How many times have you seen my eyes turn yellow?" Matt asks.

Lotor pauses. "A few."

Shit.

"But fewer, as time passed. Your body's reaction may never go away completely, but that does not make you a druid." Lotor presses his hands against the barrier, as though he could reach through and grab hold. "Matt, the choices you make matter. The choices you _have made_ matter."

"I've made some bad choices."

"You've made good ones, too."

"Like fucking what?"

"You stole all her prisoners out from under her nose," Lotor says steadily. "You stopped her from cloning Champion—she undoubtedly intended to use him as a spy. You came with me." He reaches higher, fingers stopped inches from Matt's face. "Most importantly, you left. You betrayed her. You _rejected_ her—she can't use you anymore."

Matt takes a deep breath. His chest hurts. "Too little, too late."

"No," Lotor says quietly. "You were right on time."

Matt barely hears the murmur behind him, and the harsh sigh, but then the barrier shuts down and he tips forward and Lotor catches him and wraps him up in his arms. Matt hangs on.

"I don't want this," he chokes, muffled, into the collar of Lotor's armor. "I can't do anything good like this. Even if I choose to."

"Was fixing our ship a bad thing?" Lotor asks in his ear, and Matt doesn't know why _that's_ the thing that untangles his gut and lifts the weight off his back, but he breathes in and it doesn't hurt anymore. He sinks to his knees until he's less awkwardly draped over Lotor and more properly hugging him.

"No," he says finally. "I guess it wasn't bad."

"There," Lotor says. "I think that using what she taught you in ways she'd abhor is an excellent way to take revenge."

"Stealing all her toys wasn't enough?"

"Was it?"

"...No, it wasn't." Matt surfaces—unburies his face from the collar of Lotor's armor, but keeps his arms around his neck, because he's going to enjoy this for as long as he can. "I think I can do that." At least, he'll try.

Lotor smiles. Matt remembers the entire rest of the ship's population is standing behind him.

Well, shit, they've already seen him off his rocker, and if the princess turns the barrier back on at least he'll be on Lotor's side of it now.

"So," Matt says, "what am I doing down here, anyway?"

Lotor raises an eyebrow. "What?"

"I mean..." Matt glances over his shoulder and manages to catch Keith's eye. "How'd you guys know to bring me down here?" Because really, he'd have come to sooner or later on his own—but maybe it would've been on the wrong side of an airlock. He suppresses a shudder.

"We discussed it on the way back," Keith says. "The others were already here, and Lotor said he could help."

Lotor called him traumatized. Lotor was there the _last_ time Matt went to town on some druid artifact. He wonders how much they told him about what happened—enough, apparently, for him to connect the dots.

"Thanks," Matt says to no one in particular, and gets a couple of tentative you're welcomes in return.

"Of course," Lotor says, so low that probably only Matt can hear him.

He turns his face into Lotor's chest again. If he's going to use his druid knowledge to help Voltron, he's going to be unpacking a lot more trauma, and he needs to stock up while he can.

"That ruin wasn't what we're looking for, by the way," he adds, when he remembers that that was important.

Keith sighs. "Thought so."

"May I ask what you're looking for?" Lotor asks. His arms are still tight around Matt's back.

"No," says the princess.

"You _were_ asking about key targets in the empire, earlier," he says. "I may be able to help with this as well."

There's a lengthy pause before the princess sighs. "Fine," she says. "We're looking for the clone facility that Matt destroyed."

"I've never been, but I have my suspicions," Lotor says. He rattles off a few locations over Matt's shoulder; Keith hums along.

"The second one was already on our list," he says when Lotor's done. "I guess we know where we're headed next."

"There may still be a fleet in the area," Lotor warns.

"We can deal with that." Matt hears footsteps walking away, presumably Keith's—that kid doesn't know when to quit when it comes to Shiro. After a moment, a couple more people follow.

"...Matt?" says Katie.

"We're standing," Lotor tells him, and then stands up, forcing Matt to rise with him. Matt tucks himself under Lotor's arm as he turns around; only Katie and the princess are left.

"Sorry," Matt says.

Katie's brow crinkles. "Why?"

"For," Matt waves a hand, "all of that."

"No," she says. " _I'm_ sorry. I should've realized that would set you off. Shiro was the same way."

_Ouch._

She sniffles and it's immediately a different kind of ouch. Lotor lets go of him and nudges him forward.

So Matt wraps his sister up in his arms, and with a hum and a buzz the barrier drops again behind him.

"It's okay," he says. "You can't fix what you don't know is broken, right?"

"You're not _broken_ ," she says, watery.

"I'm broken," he says, "but I'm putting myself back together." And it's going to take a while, he's realizing now. He's in an awful lot of pieces—shattered like his druid mask. The difference is, when all the pieces are back together, he doesn't have to be druid-shaped anymore.

And Katie and Lotor and Keith are helping him find his new shape, and that's okay, too. He thinks Lotor is probably in pieces, too, and maybe he can help him in return.

Katie sniffles again, but detaches. She looks from the princess to Lotor, then back to Matt.

"Okay," she says, and takes a deep breath. "I want to talk to Lotor for a bit. Okay, Allura?"

The princess—right, that’s who Allura is, he _has_ heard her name before—nods. "Fine. But don't hesitate to call me if you need anything."

"I will."

Allura looks at Matt and her face isn't _quite_ as hard as it was before. "After you, then."

"One sec." Matt glances at Lotor, then meets Allura's eyes. "If his information turns out to be useful, are you gonna let him out?"

There's a pause.

"I'll consider it," she says, and that's something. Matt turns to Lotor, who's still just on the other side of the barrier, watching them.

"Hey," he says. "We aren't just surviving anymore. We survived. There's a difference."

Surprise flickers across Lotor's face, but he nods. They can talk about it later. Matt nods to Allura, and they start towards the door.

"Matt," Lotor calls.

Matt turns. Lotor smiles.

"You are the bravest person I have ever met. Don't forget it."

That... that means a lot. Matt doesn't know how to respond, so he nods, and doesn't turn and keep walking until Allura clears her throat.

They leave and the door shuts behind them. Allura stops.

"I... should apologize," she says.

Interesting. Matt waits.

"I only saw what Lotor has done—no. I saw what his _father_ has done, and judged him by it, and by association, you. It should have occurred to me that you have suffered, too. So, I'm sorry."

Matt should probably just accept the apology, but there's a part of him that has always sought to _understand_ and Haggar never quite killed it, so he asks, carefully, "What happened to you?"

Allura hangs her head. "Zarkon killed my father. He destroyed my planet and all my people. Before Romelle came, I thought Coran and I were the only ones left."

Well, shit. He'd sort of known that—he'd known what Lotor's colony was for, anyway—but he hadn't realized how thoroughly _alone_ Allura had been.

"I... had hope when I learned that Lotor had saved the survivors—but then, to discover what he had done to them... I think you can understand why I don't trust him," she finishes.

"Yeah. I can," Matt says. "But it isn't that simple."

Allura sighs. "I know. Pidge explained the situation to me... as has Lotor, now. I am trying to keep an open mind about it."

Okay. So Matt and Lotor aren't the only ones picking up the pieces.

"I accept your apology," Matt says, "and I'm sorry you've suffered, too." He holds out a hand.

Allura takes it with a firm grip. "Thank you."

Well then. Princess situation dealt with, apparently. No running away required.

The elevator ride back up to the main floor is still pretty awkward, though. But Hunk and Lance greet them cheerfully enough when they enter the lounge, and everyone manages to act like Matt didn't just totally lose it until Katie returns. She plops onto the seat next to him.

"He's totally gone for you," she says.

"...I did get that impression, funny enough," he says, though he's not sure how much he wants to talk about it right now.

"Would've been nice if he had feelings back when he was fighting us," Lance grumbles.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure he was capable of emotion back then," Matt says. "He certainly had _opinions_."

"How long have you known him?" Allura asks.

"I first met him when he was fresh out of exile, but I wouldn't say I _knew_ him then," Matt says carefully. It always comes back to his time as a druid, doesn't it? "We didn't interact much."

She raises an eyebrow. "Enough to know he had opinions."

"And he knew me enough to come find me after I escaped, but I think we both knew each other better through rumor at that point." Presumably. The guards were always prone to gossip, and considering they talked about Lotor as much as they did, they probably talked about Matt when he wasn't around to hear it, too.

"We've gotten away from the point," Katie says, and maybe Matt would rather talk about Lotor's feelings than being a druid but if he had his way he wouldn't talk about either.

"Are we really going to gossip about this?" Hunk asks. Hunk is Matt's new best friend. Sorry, Shiro.

Katie grins crookedly. "I just think it's funny that my brother finally got someone interested in him, and it's the most wanted man in a ten-thousand-plus-year old empire spanning most of the known universe."

"Wow, thanks, Katie."

She stops grinning. "And I'm worried it's going to be a problem."

"Why would it be a problem?" Lance asks.

"Because it might influence what information he gives us, and what he leaves out," she says. "What if he just says things we want to hear so he gets to see Matt again?"

"Okay, first of all, there's an easy solution to that." Matt is not having this right now. "Just let us see each other whenever we want, regardless of his information. Second, what is he going to leave out? That he's been harvesting energy from his secret colony of Alteans? You already _know_ that. I don't know of anything he's done that'll make you guys hate him more." He sits back. "So what's the real problem?"

Katie looks surprised for some reason. It may have been a year or two, but she's still his sister, damn it.

"Oh!" says Hunk. "I know."

"Hunk," she says warningly.

"She's worried he'll get you killed or something," he says anyway. "Or run away and take you with him."

Oh. Well...

" _Hunk_."

"Am I wrong?"

"You didn't have to _say_ it."

"Uh," says Matt.

"I'm not wrong, then."

"Boundaries, though, Hunk!"

"She's got a point, buddy."

"Well he _asked_."

"It'd be the other way around," Matt interjects. "Kind of thought that was obvious from all the shit that happened when we got here."

"What?" Katie frowns at him.

"Meaning _you'd_ run away and take _him_ with you?" Lance asks.

"...Yeah." Matt shrugs and tries to feel like he isn't betraying them saying it. "With all the trouble we've been through in the past few days, can you blame me? I wanted to _avoid_ all of that."

"But," says Katie.

"No, no buts," says Matt flatly. "It sucked. It still kind of sucks. I forgot how to be a person and half my support system is locked in the basement."

"Well, when you put it like _that_ ," says Hunk.

"How do you forget how to be a person?" Lance asks, part derision but trailing off into genuine curiosity.

Matt sighs. Yeah, it always comes back to his time as a druid. "You know those masks the druids wear?"

Everyone nods.

"You don't to eat or drink if you wear one long enough. You don't need to sleep. You don't even need a breathable atmosphere. The quintessence keeps you alive. I didn't see my own face for over a year." Matt looks at his feet, in their stolen boots. "It's easy to forget you have a physical body when you don't have to keep it alive."

There's a long pause.

"You didn't even need to pee?" Lance asks.

"He didn't need to drink anything, why would he need to pee?" Hunk points out.

"Oh, yeah. What about bathing, though?"

Matt leans back and stares at the ceiling instead. "Yeah, I didn't bathe for a year, either. I've showered _since,_ though."

"Thank god."

"Are... you hungry?" Allura asks. "You are welcome to the kitchen."

"I..." Actually, when did he last eat? It might've been a while. Yesterday? "Probably should be? I always just ate when Lotor ate. Shit, I didn't even notice." It would really figure if he accidentally starved himself, after everything he's been through to get here.

"...You can't fix what you don't know is broken," Katie says softly.

"Yeah." Didn't really think his appetite was gonna be one of those broken things, though. God, what else is wrong that he hasn't noticed? No, okay, he's already had a breakdown today. He's saving this for later. He stands up.

"I'm gonna go... eat, I guess." Yeah, he still can't tell if he's hungry, even now that he's thinking about it. That's kind of fucked.

"I'll come!" Hunk offers, and Lance echoes him, and Katie stands up too. After a moment, so does Allura, if hesitantly.

Matt feels like he's gonna start crying again, but in kind of a good way this time. He leads the way to the kitchen and almost remembers the whole way there.

Mission "Find a Shiro" is put on hold for the next couple of days, as the paladins hit nearby Galran outposts and a few targets Lotor pointed them to. All of which turn out to be worth their time, which bodes well for Lotor, Matt hopes.

In the meantime, Matt mostly remembers to eat, cuts his hair, and meets Keith's mom.

He sees Romelle, too, but she has a tendency to leave the room when he shows up. Which is fine, for him, but he's starting to feel really bad for her, because he's bringing the paladins around but she's not coming with them. Her grievance with Lotor is too personal, and he doubts any amount of trolley problem explanations is going to convince her the bigger picture is worth looking at. He can't blame her for that, either.

That's a problem he isn't sure has a solution, or even maybe needs one.

Krolia, on the other hand, seems to have no problem with him at all. She's not very talkative—well, neither is Keith—but she doesn't avoid him. Today, she comes and finds him on the bridge while the paladins are in battle.

"Keith told me about you," she says, and that could mean just about anything.

"...Okay," he says.

"I thought I should tell you your situation isn't uncommon," she says.

He's _pretty_ sure she's not talking about bullshitting his way into becoming a druid—but then, there _was_ Ulaz.

"The Blade are spies," she continues, "which means we have to act as though we're as loyal to the empire as anyone else."

Well, no shit. But he sees what she's getting at.

"From what Keith told me, he's never been on an undercover mission. Partly because they take too much time and he doesn't look Galra, but I suspect it's as much because he wouldn't be able to stay quiet when he sees something he disagrees with." She smiles a proud little smile. "I'm glad he stands up for what's right. But he'd make a terrible spy."

"You're saying I _would_ make a good spy," Matt says.

"Not anymore. You're the second most wanted person in the empire now."

Fair enough.

"My point is that you've probably looked at my son and his companions and felt you couldn't measure up."

Ow. Right where he's sorest. "And?"

"And shutting up and playing along isn't always undesirable," she says. Oh. "This is war. It isn't pretty. It isn't clean. For every symbol of goodness that those hurt by the empire look up to, there are dozens of us carrying out the dirty work to make sure we win." She glances down at him. "If you want someone to talk to about it, I'm here."

That's... unexpected. But it's nice. "...Thanks," he says.

"Of course."

He wonders if there's any dirty work he can do—but he isn't a spy and he didn't choose to be where he was, and it's not like he wants to do any of that again. He wants to do good, even if he can't be a "symbol of goodness" like the paladins. Not just good, though—unambiguously good. The kind of good that doesn't hurt anyone he helps along the way, even if the cost is potentially worth it.

"What do you think about Lotor?" he asks.

"He was always an enigma for us," Krolia says. "We were never sure whose side he was on—his own, possibly. Now? I doubt he's loyal to his father. He's likely loyal to you. Beyond that, he has yet to prove himself."

Very logical, he decides. If anyone here is free of emotional bias on the issue, it's her.

"What would it take for him to prove himself?" he asks.

She doesn't respond for a while—the battle has shifted closer, and it looks tight for a moment. Then they form Voltron and Krolia's grip on the back of someone's chair loosens.

"There's no one thing he can do," she says finally. "Romelle wants him to go back to the colony and admit what he's done, though. That might be a start."

A painful start, but Matt sees the logic in that, too. But maybe, now that they're here, with Voltron, with the empire crumbling away piece by piece, Lotor's solution is no longer the only one. He hopes so.

"You knew Ulaz," Krolia says, apropos of nothing.

"We were acquainted," Matt says carefully.

"I didn't get the chance to talk to him before he died," she says—huh, no one told him he'd died. Or that they knew each other, but then, he’s getting the impression Ulaz was a Blade, too. "But Keith said he mentioned you."

"What are you getting at?" Matt asks, because he wants to know sooner rather than later if he's being accused of something.

"You had access to the druid records," she says. "We heard that they were wiped almost clean around the time you left. Was that you?"

"Oh. I actually forgot I did that." Considering everything else he did... "I stole some records, too. But I left them on the ship I took... which is back on that moon... shit.” He rubs his face. “I took everything they had on Shiro, so the location of the clone facility was probably in there too. And I left it behind."

The one really good thing he could have helped with, and he fucked it up.

"You couldn't have known it would be useful," Krolia says before he can go into a full meltdown. "If you remember the location of this moon, we may still be able to retrieve the information."

"I might be able to find it again," Matt says, "and if I can't, Lotor probably can. But there's always the chance someone else found it already. The atmosphere messed with my long-range scanner; I bet smugglers are all over that kind of place."

"Mm. But we won't know until we look."

Matt glances around. Coran is focused on the battle, Romelle is nowhere to be seen, and everyone else is out fighting.

"You're not gonna get me in trouble if I go talk to Lotor now, are you?" he asks.

"No," she says simply.

"Cool." He slips away.

Lotor is reading when Matt enters the dungeon, but by the time he gets to the cell he's put his book—an actual physical book, they must not have trusted him with a datapad—down and stood.

"You won't get in trouble for being here, will you?" Lotor asks.

"Not if no one finds out," Matt says. "Do you remember where that moon we met on is? 'Cause I stole a bunch of records, including probably where the clone facility is, but I left them on my ship."

"Oh," says Lotor. "Yes, I know the coordinates."

"Great. Now that that's out of the way..." Matt leans against the barrier and sighs. "Hey."

"Hey," Lotor repeats, fingers drifting across the other side of the barrier.

Matt kicks at the floor. "My sister didn't interrogate you too hard the other day, did she?"

"She only asked about you," Lotor says, then pauses. "Us," he corrects.

"Cool." Matt rolls his head against the barrier to look up at him (it tingles). "I kinda figured."

Lotor nods, and his palm presses against the barrier just opposite Matt's cheek.

"This still sucks," says Matt.

"It does," says Lotor.

Matt sighs again, and when he presses his own hand against the barrier, Lotor lifts his other to meet it. The barrier's only a centimeter thick but it might as well be a mile.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

"Me?" Lotor asks, in a tone that makes it clear he thinks he should be the one asking. Which is fair.

"Yeah," Matt says to the floor, "because I'm not, and it's obvious that I'm not, and you could be, but I think you probably aren't either, but you aren't _showing_ it, so either you know how to handle it—"

"Please breathe."

Matt breathes. "—in which case, _please tell me how,_ or you're just wound up so tight you're not letting it out at all, which is probably... unhealthy."

Lotor is quiet. Matt looks back up; Lotor's watching him, face totally blank, until Matt holds his gaze for a few seconds. Then his brow scrunches and he closes his eyes.

"You're right," he says. "But this is not a safe place for me to break down."

"Then we shouldn't have come here."

"It's been good for you."

"You matter, too, though." Matt turns to actually face him full on, both hands against the barrier. "I want you to be okay too."

Lotor opens his eyes. "I don't have to be," he says.

Pieces, they're both in pieces, Matt thinks.

"I don't have to be, either," he says. "We can both live out the rest of our lives being all bent up inside. But it's okay to, y'know, _not_ do that, too." He taps on the barrier. "You can't think that bringing me here is some kind of—final sacrifice, or something. That you can do things for me and not get anything in return. I won't accept that. This thing goes both ways." He points back and forth between the two of them. "You can't stop me from giving a shit about you."

"...Oh," says Lotor.

"You don't have to have mental breakdowns like I've been doing, either," Matt adds, a little desperately. "But you can talk to me. It's not like I have, I dunno, psychologist training, but I can listen, at least."

He's starting to feel like he's begging— _let me do something for you, too._ Lotor just blinks at him.

"...Galra don't have psychologists, generally," he says.

"You're only half," Matt points out, and hopes that isn't a sore point.

"I know," Lotor says slowly, "I only mean to say that no one has made this offer before. I... don't know where to begin."

"Oh." Matt straightens. He almost didn't think that was gonna work. "Well. Wherever you want, I guess. Like... something you're worried about right now, or, I dunno. Part of your past. Something that bothers you, something that scares you."

Lotor taps his fingers against the barrier. He's doing the blank-face thing again, stony and stoic, like a mask, but the tapping gives him away, so Matt waits.

"If I say too much, you'll leave," he says eventually. _I'm scared you'll leave me,_ is what Matt is pretty sure that means.

"You're not gonna get rid of me that easy," Matt says. And, just in case that comes off too lightly, "Seriously. I'm not going anywhere. I don't _want_ to leave you."

"That's easy to say," Lotor says quietly. "...I don't mean to doubt you, but you know very little about me, after all."

Ouch. But he underestimates Matt's stubbornness, if nothing else.

So. "Lotor," Matt says softly. "I've seen enough of you that I like that I'm not going to throw it all away at the first hint of trouble. You're _worth_ the trouble."

Lotor stares at him. He opens his mouth to speak but Krolia's voice sounds over the announcement system before he can.

"Matt? The battle is over."

Shit, of course he has to go _now._ But he doesn't move yet.

"You should go," Lotor says, closing back up again like a duffel bag—zip. "You'll get in trouble if they find you here."

"I just said you're worth the trouble," Matt says before he even realizes he's going to say it. But okay, he'll do it to get the point across. "If you want me to stay, I'll stay."

Lotor's back to staring. For a tense moment, they're silent; then Lotor shakes his head.

"Go ahead," he says. "I'll be fine. I need to... think."

"Okay, but I'll be back." You know, just in case that was in doubt. Matt drags himself back from the barrier. "See you later."

"See you later," Lotor echoes, unmoving. Matt backs halfway across the room, maintaining eye contact, until he finally turns around and heads out. He gets to the bridge mere seconds before the paladins—he nods to Krolia and she nods back. Spies. Cool.

"Good job, guys," Keith says tiredly. "Rest up, we can debrief after dinner."

Lance and Hunk let out relieved groans in unison; Katie already has a datapad in her hand, and the three of them traipse off the bridge without another word. It's really bullshit that _kids_ are at the front lines of this war—leading them, even. Especially when the leader of the other side is so fuck-off old. Everything's pretty bullshit, now he thinks about it. Except Lotor.

Oh, he's so far gone.

Keith and Allura stay on the bridge, and Coran and Krolia join them, probably to do their own little leadership debrief. Matt decides it's probably time he should eat.

"Matt," Keith calls before he can get off the bridge. He turns; Keith isn't coming over and he isn't waving Matt over either. Something brief, then.

"Yeah?"

"We're heading to the next place on the list tomorrow," Keith calls. "So you're prepared."

"Oh!" Right, he had something to say about that. "About that—if we can find the ship I stole when I escaped, and the files I stole are still there, they might have the actual location. I was so out of it I kinda... forgot about that. But Lotor remembers where it is."

Allura's making a face but Keith takes it all in stride—bless that kid, really, space has been good for him. Or his mom has. Or both.

"Then we'll go there after," Keith says, "thanks." And he turns back to the rest of the group. Matt goes to eat his goo.

The next place they go is another druid facility, and possibly a cloning facility at that, but it's not the one Matt blew up because at this one they do find bodies and the bodies aren't Shiro(s). Matt has only a _minor_ meltdown—because what if Project Kuron had multiple subjects and he'd sent the rigged quintessence to the wrong one? But Katie points out that the destruction here is very definitively laser blasts and ion cannons and _not_ some kind of inner explosion, which more or less stops the meltdown in its tracks.

And Keith takes him down to see Lotor again, just in case, and Lotor assures him that Haggar would have given a different subject a different project name and yes, if his rigged quintessence was sent to Project Kuron and Shiro was the subject of Project Kuron then the quintessence _definitely_ blew up Shiro's clones and not anyone else's.

They can't really talk, then, with Keith there, but Matt sneaks down in the middle of the night to see him again. This time, Lotor is ready to talk—he tells Matt about the planet he'd been put in charge of long ago, how he'd worked with them to gather quintessence... how his father had destroyed the planet and exiled him over it. How it pains him to think of all those lives lost when they'd trusted him to save them.

Matt discovers a flaw in his plan—he doesn't know how to offer words of comfort for this, or comfort at all when Lotor's still trapped in his cell. And when he tells Lotor it's not his fault, he doesn't think Lotor believes him.

But when he yawns so wide he nearly tips over, and Lotor tells him to go to bed, and Matt agrees—he promises to come back again, and Lotor smiles at him, so maybe just being here will be enough.

They start towards the moon in the morning. It's in the middle of the empire, of course, so their route there is dotted with targets to hit on the way—which means that Matt can sneak down to Lotor during every battle. It's a little bit like it used to be, then, just talking about things for the brief periods of time they're together, except now Lotor is telling him about everything that's ever hurt him. Matt tells him about his time as a druid in return—it's nothing Lotor doesn't already know, for the most part, but Matt is determined not to make this a one-sided thing and talking about it helps, anyway. They both have a lot to come to terms with.

And then, when they're almost there, Matt goes down to visit and finds Romelle standing outside the dungeon entrance, wringing the hem of her shirt between her fingers. From all the wrinkles when she sees him and lets go, he suspects she's been here a while.

"You're here to free him," she accuses.

"Nope. Just to chat." He's barely seen so much as a glimpse of her since they arrived and he's feeling woefully unprepared for whatever this conversation is going to be. If he were feeling petty maybe he'd accuse her of something in return, but god, he still feels bad for her. "Did you need something?"

She glances at the doorway and her mouth twists. She doesn't say anything, though—she doesn't trust him, of course.

"Well, I'm going in," Matt says, giving her a wide berth as he passes her to get to the door. "If you want to come too and make sure I don't free him or whatever, be my guest."

He goes in, and after a moment, she slips in too. He doesn't think she came here to hurt Lotor or anything—yell at him, maybe, but she doesn't seem capable of worse. For now, she lingers by the doorway while he continues on to the cell.

"I see we have a guest," Lotor says.

"Yeah, she was standing outside," Matt says, dropping cross-legged into his usual spot outside the barrier. "She wouldn't say what she wants, but I can guess."

Lotor sighs. "I apologized when we arrived, but I doubt her feelings have changed."

"I'd have trouble forgiving you if you hurt my sister," Matt says frankly. "The best you can hope for is that she'll tolerate you, probably."

Lotor frowns.

"You can't win with everyone," Matt adds. "But 'victory or death' isn't true here."

Lotor smiles thinly. "I have trouble convincing myself of that."

"Then I'll keep reminding you." Matt slouches—he needs to bring a chair down here next time, or at least a pillow. "Anything you wanna talk about today, or would you rather not while she's watching?"

Lotor looks over Matt's shoulder. "Well, she's coming over, now."

Matt glances back. Sure enough, she's on her way, with that kind of hurried walk people do when they think they're somewhere they're not supposed to be. She stops next to Matt and looks down at him, hands balled into fists at her sides.

" _Why_ are you _here?_ " she asks.

Matt glances around. "To chat? I thought I said that."

She shakes her head. "But _why?_ With _him?_ You're a human like the others, and you know what he did."

Matt looks at Lotor. Lotor nods, slightly, and Matt sighs and scoots around to face her.

"Have a seat," he says, and she does, but not before shooting Lotor a nervous glare. She brings her knees up to her chest and pouts at him.

"Well?" she says.

"Okay," Matt says. "But first, I don't expect this to change your mind, or anything. You have the right to feel whatever you're feeling."

Her pout deepens, but she nods.

"So." Matt still feels so unprepared for this conversation. "...I like him. He's done a lot for me—he's saved my life. And even if he hadn't, I'd have a different perspective on all the bad things he's done, anyway." Deep breath. "I've done a lot of bad things, too. We're at war. I'm sure you've seen some of it now that you're here, with Voltron, but it's been going on a lot longer, and it's been a lot worse than it is now. When you're living in the middle of that... you get used to it."

"You're going to tell me it could be worse," she accuses.

"No. Well, yes, it _could_ be, but no, that's not what I'm getting at." Matt runs a hand through his newly-short hair. "My point is that I don't have the personal connection you have, and I've seen so much other bad stuff—"

"Stop talking to me like I'm a child," she interrupts, straightening up a little. "I _have_ seen this war firsthand. I saw my brother _die._ I know the universe isn't all sunshine and flowers, so stop acting like I don't."

Well. Okay. Matt straightens up, too.

"For me, what he did to your colony is just another thing," he says flatly. "Far from the worst I've seen. And if I were in his position, when he made the decision to do it, I might have done the same."

She drops her knees and leans forward. "You would have _killed my people_ too!?"

"I would have done what I had to do," Matt says carefully, "if the choice were between killing a few and letting everyone die. But I think Lotor should explain his reasons, himself."

She looks at Lotor, still frowning deeply. Matt look at Lotor too, trying to convey _I'm with you_ with every inch of his being. Lotor looks between the two and takes a deep breath.

And he explains.

It takes a while—Romelle challenges every detail of his story, and Lotor responds to every interruption with patience, though the way his fingers are twitching in his lap suggests it isn't easy. He glances at Matt, too, every once in a while, and Matt nods to him every time.

When he finishes, Romelle doesn't say anything for a while. Eventually, she stands.

"I'll never forgive you," she says to Lotor, but it sounds less like a threat and more like an explanation, a stated fact.

"You don’t have to," Lotor says quietly. She looks at him a few seconds longer, and then she turns and leaves, and that's that. Lotor drops his head into his hands and sighs.

"That went well," Matt says.

"I suppose." Lotor shakes his head before he lifts it. "I would have liked it if she understood, but I know that's too much to hope for."

"I think she understood, she just couldn't accept it." Matt tips sideways and rests his head on the floor. "Ugh. I should probably go, too, before I get caught."

"You certainly look enthusiastic about it."

Matt sticks out his tongue and Lotor smiles.

"I've missed you," he says. "...Even though you come to visit when you can. It's not the same."

Matt _knows_ Lotor likes him but his heart stutters anyway. "Yeah," he says. "I miss you, too."

"We must be near the moon by now. Perhaps that will be enough..." Lotor shakes his head. "I doubt they will ever trust me, regardless."

"As long as they don't think you're out to get them." Matt reaches to touch the barrier, runs his fingers across the familiar tingle. "Maybe soon."

"I hope so."

If they let Lotor out... things are going to be different between them, probably. Matt isn't sure how, yet, but it can't be _worse._

It's taken a while to get through his head that things can only get better from here.

"Matt," Keith says over the announcement system. Dammit. He groans and sits up.

"Later, then," Lotor says.

"You know it."

Matt heaves himself up and drags himself back to the bridge. Allura looks vaguely disapproving, but Lance is wiggling his eyebrows while Hunk elbows him. Keith gives him a look.

Matt just shrugs.

They finally reach the moon a couple days later, and it's a little weird to be here, looking down on this place again, like he was so long ago—except it's so much different this time. He takes a deep breath, and steadies himself.

"We'll probably have to search from within the atmosphere," he tells the group.

"Not if I can modulate the sensor beams to cut through the interference," Katie says, pushing her glasses—his glasses, actually—up on her nose.

"...Can you get a good enough reading _on_ the interference?" Matt goes to look over her shoulder at her display. "Unless your sensors are _way_ more powerful—Oh. They are."

Katie grins and taps away. Matt watches. She's gotten a lot better at this than she was when he left—but it's been a while, now. What else did he miss?

"Done!" she says. "The signal's a bit weak, but we can get a pretty good look at the moon's surface."

She brings it up on the display and everyone crowds around. A holographic elevation map appears piece by piece, spanning all of the moon's surface that they can see from this angle. It's not long before a ship-shaped bump appears.

"There," Matt says, suddenly breathless. "That's it."

"Then let's go." Keith is already turning to head down to his lion. Matt hurries to follow.

They don't get a visual on the ship until they're practically on top of it. The black lion lands heavily beside it; parts of the ship's outer shell are lying on the moon's surface around it, and Matt can tell even from here that some parts are missing. That doesn't bode well.

"Hm," says Keith.

"I'll head out and take a look," Matt says, because at least _some_ of the ship is there. He puts on his helmet and the black lion dips to let him out.

The moon is as blustery as he remembers—he can't feel it as well, now that he's actually wearing proper protection, but he can feel the phantom of his druid robes around his legs as he crunches across the moon's surface to the ship.

He tries the cockpit first, just in case. There are chunks missing from here, too, enough that he can't even try to start the thing, not that he expected it to work regardless. He'll have to pull out the data core, if it's still here.

Fortunately, all that time spent getting zapped by Lotor's ship has given him a pretty good sense of Galra construction. He hops back out of the ship and heads around to the back—the panel covering what he's looking for is still there, which is a good sign. He pries it off.

"How's it going?" Keith asks, voice thin and tinny through his comm. At least Matt can hear him at all this time.

"Looking good," Matt says. He detaches one of the cooling modules and heaves it aside, and—there, the data core, untouched. "I found it. As long as the atmosphere hasn't corroded it, the data should be here."

Keith lets out a crackling breath. "Good," he says. "Hop back in and we'll get it back to the castle."

Matt trudges back with the core cradled carefully in his arms. He climbs into the lion's mouth and they launch as he makes his way back up to Keith, who's already informing the others of what they found. Matt lifts the core to show them.

"I'll be ready for it when you get here," Katie says, and the line closes. Keith glances up at Matt.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

"Fine." Matt tucks the core under one arm and pulls his helmet off with the other. "Nervous the data's been corrupted, but fine. Why?"

"I thought being here might set you off."

"Oh." Matt watches the moon shrink into the distance beneath them. "No, it's weird, but I'm okay."

"Good," Keith says simply.

They're back at the castle in minutes, and Katie meets them to take the core. He's going to follow her to help extract the data, but Keith catches his arm and nods towards Allura.

"Are you certain Lotor intends us no harm?" she asks when they approach.

"Completely," Matt says, and means it, and hopes this means they're going to let him out already.

Sure enough, Allura sighs, but she says, "He has proven his willingness to help, if nothing else. I still can't say I trust him, but we may let him out—during the day. He must still sleep in his cell. I expect your help in enforcing this, is that clear?"

"Yup." God, finally, yes.

"Then let's go." She doesn't sound particularly happy about it, but she nevertheless leads the way to the elevator. Lance trails after them; Keith heads off to join Katie and Hunk.

Lotor stands to meet them when they enter the dungeon, with that kind of expectant blankness where he doesn't know what to expect but doesn't want anyone to know he's unprepared. Matt watches his face open in surprise as Allura explains, without really paying attention to what she's saying.

When she goes to the barrier controls, Lotor meets his eyes and smiles.

And the barrier lifts, and Lotor steps out, closer, and Matt realizes his face aches because he's grinning wider than he has in a while.

"Hey," says Lotor.

"Hey," says Matt, and he goes and hugs him already. Lotor holds him tight. Lance coos.

It's not Earth-shattering—his knees don't go weak with relief, or anything. But _god_ is it nice, and even once Lance's cooing turns to laughter, he doesn't want to let go.

"Okay," Allura says finally. "If you want to stay down here, you may, but Lance and I are heading back up. We still have yet to see if your data survived."

Right, that. Matt surfaces reluctantly.

"We'll be up in a sec," he says, turning just enough to see her but not enough that he has to let go.

She nods, and takes Lance by the arm to pull him away. Lance pouts but follows without complaint. Matt turns back to Lotor.

"Thank you for everything," Lotor says softly. He's stroking the disaster that is Matt's ponytail with one hand, still holding him tight with the other.

"We aren't done yet," Matt says, because, you know. He'll still be spending his nights as a prisoner.

"Even so." Lotor leans down and buries his face in the top of Matt's head. "Thank you."

"Anytime."

And they stay wrapped in each other's arms like that for another minute, until Lotor lifts his head.

"We ought to head up," he says.

"Yeah." Matt steps away reluctantly, but he takes Lotor's hand to lead him to the elevator and that's good too.

Everyone's gathered around Katie when they arrive on the bridge, eyes fixed on her display, which means not even Lance comments on their hand-holding. Keith glances up long enough to wave them over, though, and they join the group.

"The data's intact," he says. "Now we're just trying to find the location."

Right, this is where he comes in. Matt leans to point over Katie's shoulder.

"In there," he says. "You're in the right area, but the wrong file. It'd be in with the medical reports."

"Medical? Why?" she asks.

"Well, _she_ knew where her projects were," Matt points out. "But sometimes they got, uh, moved between locations, so the medical reports have the details on the facilities they were generated in."

"Huh." She opens the file, selects the location data. And there are the coordinates, big and bold on the screen. Everyone goes silent, for a moment.

"We're going." Keith is the one to break the silence. He breaks free from the rest of the group to head to the bridge controls.

"Now?" Lance asks.

"Yes, now." Keith enters the coordinates, and turns back to face them. "If there's any chance we can get Shiro a body, then we don't have another minute to waste."

Allura nods. "I'll open a wormhole."

She steps up to her pedestal, and the rest of the paladins head off to their own seats. Romelle and Krolia go to stand by the door, behind Allura, but Matt stays right where he is, and Lotor with him. He puts a hand on Katie's shoulder, and she takes it in one of her own.

The wormhole opens, and the ship flies through.

The destruction is... something. Matt's gut twists at how thoroughly the place has been obliterated—the quintessence certainly did its job. Bits and pieces of the facility, even chunks of rock from the surface it sat on, float freely around them.

A pod drifts by—cracked nearly in half. It's empty.

"...Scanning for signs of life," Coran says into the dead silence.

The scanner beeps steadily. No one speaks. Keith is still standing up front, motionless.

There's a different beep. Coran taps on the display; Matt doesn't know what the readings mean, but it's found something.

"It _could_ be life," Coran says. "It's weak, and there's some kind of interference—it seems to be deep within the ruins."

"I'm going to go look," Keith says, and off he goes. There's nothing the rest of them can do but wait. Lotor squeezes Matt's hand.

The black lion gets further into the wreckage than the castle; Keith loops them in on his visuals, so they can watch as he pushes ever closer to the source of the readings.

And—there it is. An intact pod, wedged beneath a fallen beam, held fast so it didn't drift away like the rest.

"Found you," Keith says breathlessly, barely audible over the comms.

The room holds its collected breath as the lion nudges its snout under the beam, lifts it away, takes the pod carefully in its jaws. No one speaks as the lion flies ever so carefully back; they file silently down to the hangar as one, so that when the black lion lands and delicately places the pod down, they're all there to meet it. Coran goes to the pod immediately; Keith comes barreling out moments later.

"Is he alive?" he demands.

"He's alive!" Coran exclaims, and everyone breathes again. "He seems to be in some sort of stasis."

"Should we wake him up?" Keith asks.

"No!" Matt says, a little too loudly, and everyone looks at him. He lets go of Lotor and wiggles to the front. "Look, if Haggar was cloning him, she probably intended the clones to be sleeper agents. She'd be controlling him through his arm. So we should probably get that off first." He taps the pod's surface, above that druid tech arm that he _knew_ Shiro had but had never seen—he tries not to look at it too hard. "Also, uh—if we're putting _Shiro_ -Shiro in him—maybe don't wake him up. That'd be weird."

"He's got a point," says Hunk. Again—new best friend.

"We're already kind of in ethical hot water," Katie mutters. "Clone or not, that's a person in there. We're just gonna overwrite him."

"Would it help if I said he's probably never been awake before?" Matt offers. "He doesn't have any memories of his own. Without the arm, he won't have Shiro's memories, either. He's... y'know, blank."

"But he _could_ be a person?" Lance asks.

"If we let him, I guess." Matt's not sure he likes where this conversation is heading.

"Ethical hot water," Katie repeats.

"You found him for this purpose, did you not?" Lotor asks tentatively. "What is the point in hesitating now?"

"The point is that we're erasing a person. Or a potential person," Lance says. "And that's kind of not good."

"But what about Shiro?" Keith points out. "He's still stuck in the black lion. We can't just abandon him."

Matt throws up his hands before anyone can add more. "Okay!" he says. "Look, you've got two options here. Either we wake this clone up and let him be whoever he's gonna be, and Shiro is basically a ghost forever—or we get Shiro back at the expense of whoever this guy _could_ be. That's it."

"Can we... back up a tick?" Romelle asks tentatively into the resounding silence. "How are we to transfer a ghost into this body at all?"

"Oh," says Hunk, "good question."

And Matt realizes, with a sinking feeling, that he knows _exactly_ how to do it. It's just like transferring the quintessence of his mask into Lotor's ship, except this quintessence is _conscious._

"Matt?" Lotor says, very quietly, but of course everyone is still silent so all eyes turn to him.

"Yeah," Matt says. "I can do it. It's... a druid thing. Which brings me back to my question—though as far as I'm concerned, the choice is obvious."

Krolia nods. Lotor meets his eyes and Matt can tell he's thinking the same. But everyone else _wavers._

Good people, Matt thinks. They hesitate because they're good—because they're thinking of this empty body as a person, and they aren't wrong.

But Matt is also thinking—they're losing Shiro, or they're losing a stranger they've never even met. And he's long since learned where his priorities lie. Maybe he isn't good, then, but maybe that means he can make choices that good people can't.

"Okay," he says finally. Still none of the paladins have spoken. "Should we put it to a vote or something? Is anyone definitely _against_ this?"

No one meets his eye.

"Is anyone definitely _for_ this?" he asks, raising his own hand.

"I should abstain," Lotor says, "but I agree that there is an obvious choice here."

"I'm for it," Krolia says easily.

Keith hesitates only a moment before he lifts his hand, too. "Yeah."

Romelle fidgets. "I... didn't know him, so I think I shouldn't vote either..."

"That's three-ish yeses." Matt eyes the rest of the paladins. "Does anyone have a serious objection?"

They still don't meet his eye. Fine, he'll press the issue.

"I'll give you, uh, three seconds. If you have something to say, say it; if you don't want to make this decision, just walk away guilt-free."

"Three seconds?!" Lance yelps.

"Is more time actually gonna help you make a decision?"

Lance makes a face. Then he throws up his hands and walks out.

"Three," says Matt.

Hunk turns and books it after Lance. Romelle follows.

"Two."

"Fine, I'm in," says Katie, arms crossed.

"I'll help regardless of your choice," says Coran solemnly.

"...One."

Matt looks at Allura.

She sighs. "Fine. We'll sacrifice this clone."

"Okay." Deep breath. No guilt. "Then let's get his arm off."

Opening the pod is a process, especially since they don't want to wake the clone. Katie hooks her computer up and disables the awakening procedure; they open the pod slowly, just in case, and have to stop several times when the clone shows signs of brain activity. Katie has to walk away at that, but she doesn't leave—just stands on the other side of the room, facing away, before eventually coming back. Allura's face is grim.

But they get it open, and they start to detach the arm, and it's Matt's turn to walk away because he's had a lot of Haggar's experiments prone before him like this, and this is Shiro. He doesn't return until the arm is off.

Brain activity ceases—Katie and Allura don't look relieved about that.

And then it's Matt's turn. He steadies himself and looks up at the black lion.

"Okay," he says. "I need the body to be within arm's reach of the lion."

They dutifully move the pod. Matt places one hand on the black lion's massive snout, the other atop the clone's head.

Deep breath. "Here we go."

Shiro's quintessence is different from the lion's—the lion's is vast and strange, different from any he's felt, and Shiro's is small and mundane in comparison. Familiar, though. He tugs on it, gently, and it comes willingly with a brush of a _hello, good to see you._

And he pulls it into himself, and pushes it out right into the clone. The quintessence streams between the two—he can almost see it, running through his arms like lightning. The clone's hair is turning white with the burn of it.

It doesn't take long—a minute, maybe—before the last of it snaps into place, and Shiro awakes with a gasp. Matt sags, and Lotor is there to catch him.

"Shiro?" Keith says urgently.

Shiro wheezes a moment before he manages a weak, "Yeah."

Keith almost knocks the whole pod over hugging him. Krolia's smiling indulgently; Allura and Katie and Coran, too, are crying. Matt just gets his feet back under him.

"Good work," Lotor murmurs in his ear.

It's a while before Keith lets go of Shiro—or at least, backs off enough to let him sit up—but when he does, Shiro reaches for Matt. Matt takes his hand.

"Thank you," Shiro says. He grins crookedly. "Now we're even."

"I guess we are." Is Matt crying too? He might be.

"Alright, now, Shiro needs to rest," Coran says finally.

"But—"

"Nope! He needs to rest." Coran gives Keith a look. Matt takes his hand back to surreptitiously wipe at his eyes.

"Coran," Shiro says, "it's fine. I want to see everyone."

"You just spent phoebs without a physical form!" Coran points a finger at him. "I'll bet you can't even walk yet."

Shiro eyes him.

"Shiro," Keith says warningly.

"Fine." Shiro sinks back into the pod. "One thing, though." He looks over. "Can I talk to Matt, privately?"

And this is the part where Matt _should_ freak out about all the things he's done—but, weirdly, he's not so scared anymore. Lotor squeezes his shoulder; he pats his hand reassuringly, and Lotor follows the rest a short distance away.

"Hey Matt." Shiro gives him a tired grin. "Been a while."

"Yeah. You've been through some shit."

"So have you." Shiro reaches to him again. "I heard you, the day you came back to us. I'm sorry."

"Oh." Of course he did. "Well, at least I don't have to say it again."

"I wanted to say that I'm glad you survived," Shiro says, and he takes Matt's hand when he doesn't offer it and gives it a squeeze. "No matter what."

Shiro's being sincere. Matt knows because he spent months crammed into a small spaceship with the guy—and it's not that he's a bad liar (at least when it counts), it's that Matt can tell when he means what he's saying. He means this.

It really does make him feel better.

"Couldn't have done it without you," Matt chokes out.

Shiro grins. "Likewise."

Matt wipes his eyes again with his free hand. "Fuck, I'm gonna start crying again."

"That's okay," Shiro says. "Cry all you need to."

"Oh, shut up." Matt sniffles. "Do me a favor? If I ever start freaking out like I did that day, knock some sense into me. I'm working on it."

"You got it, if you'll do the same for me."

"Of course. And let go of my hand already, we've both got almost-boyfriends back there and they might get the wrong idea."

Shiro snorts and lets go. "We should probably work on that, too, huh?"

That makes Matt grin, even if it's crooked. "It's about time."

"Oh, shut up." Shiro's grinning too, though. Matt taps the pod.

"Okay, old man, I'm gonna let you rest," he says. "But... thank you."

"Anytime, Matt."

Matt turns and walks towards the others. Keith immediately heads back to the pod; Coran trails after him, spouting reminders to let Shiro rest. Matt doesn't miss the smile on Krolia's face before she turns to go, and Katie and Romelle follow. Matt leans headfirst into Lotor's chest again.

"I'm exhausted," he says.

"You've done well," Lotor says. "The witch would be livid."

"Good." The stress is catching up with him now, building in his throat, and he's feeling like he might break down again soon, if he isn't careful. But at least he can feel it coming. "Wanna nap with me?"

"I doubt I'll sleep, but I'll come with you."

"Works for me."

Matt takes his hand and leads the way to his room. They encounter Lance and Hunk in the lounge.

"Did it work?" Lance asks, standing when they enter.

"Yeah," says Matt. "Shiro's back."

"Oh, good," Hunk says, but they both still look troubled. They're both probably feeling all sorts of guilt, he figures. It's just something they'll have to work through, but he's pretty sure they'll make it out okay.

They pass Allura on the way out, who nods to them before entering the lounge. That's the other good news—they don't have to do this alone.

It feels like a little bit of a miracle when they finally make it to Matt's room, but curling up with Lotor— _finally_ —is a delight, even if the bed is a little too small.

"Hey," he mumbles. He's almost asleep already, but this is important. "I love you, by the way."

"I love you," Lotor murmurs back, and Matt knows that even with every dip in the road, things can only get better from here. He falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> if there were two guys on the moon and the entire empire tried to kill them would that be fucked up or what
> 
> obviously the timeline here is different but i cant very well have the characters be like "because youre here we havent been to oriande!" cuz like. they dont know. i tried, but in case you got confused:  
> 1\. keith survived the whole naxcela business on his own somehow. maybe it didnt even happen. i mean, kuron never escaped, so haggar wasnt spying on the team the whole time, so... yeah. like i said, i didnt rewatch anything ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> 2\. so keith was just juggling being black paladin and doing marmora things until he went to get krolia. he probably did do the voltron show. he definitely hated it.  
> 3\. yeah the whole sincline battle and quintessence field stuff and timeskip just dont happen (yay for earth i guess)  
> 4\. and of course allura has not been to oriande. theyll get there eventually, though. lotor wont fail the test in this au, either! probably!
> 
> alright find me @[maternalcube](http://maternalcube.tumblr.com) love you all bye


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